


In All Your Constellations

by Pineapplepie



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Not Related, Fluff and Angst, Hiro is of age, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Addiction, References to Drugs, Slight pining, Slow Build, awkward crushes, awkward kiddos, i don't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-02 20:39:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 90,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pineapplepie/pseuds/Pineapplepie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m Tadashi, by the way." He smiled while he said it, and the words sounded like they were being pulled from left to right like chewing gum.<br/>"Hiro."<br/>"Hiro." It was a small word slipping through his mouth, careful like he was scared he’d crush it with his teeth. Hiro was still trying to put his brain back together, but those fucking eyes made it all fall apart again and again.<br/>This was getting borderline ridiculous.<br/>"Nice to meet you." He dribbled his fingers across the mug. "Hiro."<br/>And there it was again - his name coming from another mouth. And people said Hiro’s name all the time. They groaned it and cursed it and screamed it inches away from his face, but they never said it in a way that made it feel personal, too close for comfort, like knees brushing and hands touching.<br/>Jesus Christ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is. It's sort of a Coffee Shop AU, but...then...the first draft turned into a freaking roller coaster ride. Tadashi lives in rainbow-tush-land, and Hiro lives next to hobos. It's a Romeo/Juliet kind of thing. Anywhore, I made Tadashi super sweet in this one. It was so hard making him all batshit evil in my last fic. I can't get over the drama, though. I just can't. I want to give these two munchkins all the angst and then wash it away with fluff! *screams*
> 
> This isn't betad. I apologize for the mistakes you might stumble upon. 
> 
> Have fun reading and have a fabtastic day! :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come flail with me on my [8tracks](http://8tracks.com/catbuggy) <3

Sometimes, he wished he could free fall into the sky, let the spectrums catch him by the hem of his sweater. He wished he could dive right in, gravitational pull letting him go and hurling him through time and space and every nebula in its wake. He wondered what stars looked like up close. He wanted to touch them, hold them, press them tight against his chest - let them burn their way into his core. 100 thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They’d reduce him to nothing. He'd be part of an abyss.

But the nearest star was 93 million miles away, and he knew he'd never reach it in time.

He'd never reach _her_ in time.

 

 

 

Hiro curled his spine back into a seating position. Only now did he notice how cold the metal was. His limbs were shaking, fingers numb, lips dry. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been staring at the sky. Time was stupid. It seeped right through his cracks when he didn't pay enough attention. Time either moved too fast or too slow, but it was never steady enough for him to keep his footing.

Hiro watched as a cloud migrated over his stars - smothering them, muting them.

Time had been the last thing on his mind.

Hiro pushed himself onto his feet. The fire escape groaned and creaked like he was inflicting pain on the brittle little bars. Mochi was pressed against the window. She was staring at him, giant button eyes screaming 'fucking feed me'. Hiro flicked a finger against the glass. The cat didn’t even flinch. Sometimes, he wasn’t even sure if Mochi was actually a cat. Maybe she was an alien, a furry fat alien that liked eating shoe laces.

Hiro pulled the hem of his sweater up to his elbow and flicked his wrist. The watch buzzed to life, display twitching.

5:34 a.m.

They’d be open soon.

Hiro locked the window. Mochi’s eyes widened. Her paws started batting at the reflection staring back at him. It looked like she was gauging his eyeballs out. Mochi hissed. Hiro hissed right back. She was going to eat his shoe laces. And by the way her eyes were going all radioactive, she was going to devour his mattress too. Hiro narrowed his eyes. Mochi started gnawing at the glass. He had to buy more catnip.  
Hiro climbed down the fire escape. It was like he was descending into another layer of the atmosphere. He liked to pretend he couldn’t breathe as well down there. He liked to pretend it was darker, deeper, like a pit that was clawing at the hem of his sweater, ready to devour him with one single bite.

And when Hiro reached the concrete below, he was 18 stories away from his stars. 18 stories and 93 million miles away from 100 thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

And her.

 

✦

 

Hiro wove himself in and out of the early morning hours, feet firmly planted onto his board. He liked using it in the alleyways. No boardwalks. He could zoom as fast as he wanted to. He could kick it up onto the brick walls and the edges of dumpsters, wavering in between the verticals. The buckles were cutting through the material of his sneakers and bruising his skin. He drifted over a puddle, air pulling the water with the tow. The back of his legs were drenched. He didn’t care. He was tired. He hadn’t slept. That wasn't something new.

The alleyways were weary, lulling in and out of a twilight coma. Everything was strung out, tired and beat from the happenings of another night. The last few passers-by had their heads dangling a little lower, fingers curled around half-empty liquor bottles and dying cigarettes. And in this light the streets didn’t look scary, the way they usually did. They were just sad and sick - and maybe even a little apologetic.

Hiro kicked the heel of his feet into the buckles, and the board upped its pace, panel sending vibrations up his muscles until his skin started to itch. His head was tingling with sleep and caffeine withdrawal and stars.

He broke out of the concrete maze. He shifted his board uphill and wove himself into a race with the trams and the first commuters. The scenery started changing, two places melting into each other like colors mixing on a palette. It was weird realizing that San Fransokyo didn’t just consist of decaying alleyways and sewage toxins. There were nice places here, too. Clean. Cozy. Places where families lived, where kids learned how to drive bicycles on sidewalks, where they had gardens on rooftops, where they had organic markets and hipster bistros and stores that sold vinyls for a buck fifty - where you could take the hoodie from your head and smile, and it wouldn’t be wrong to expect one back. This was a place where everyone smiled back. Everything was too soft, too friendly, too bright for Hiro not to narrow his eyes and blink like crazy.

His stomach started to churn. Bile bubbling.

But then here he was, racing to a fucking cafe to get a fucking cup of coffee he was just barely capable of affording. Sometimes, he did stupid things like this, and he kept questioning them, and he kept dodging the answers until he stopped looking for reasons. He just did this. He bought the cheapest cup of filter coffee in a place that made his stomach churn.

The Lucky Cat Cafe was dipped in the glow of the lantern lights. Not one light was broken. Not a single one. And even though it was still dark, it felt like these streets were a place where it was an endless loop of lazy afternoons, where even the shadows were nothing but soft discolorations in an afterglow. Pleasant lights. Pleasant breeze. Pleasant colors. Everything was lukewarm. Hiro punched a fist into his abdomen, just hard enough to make the spinning stop. His tongue was getting bitter.

It was a few minutes past six. The air around the building smelled like cayenne pepper and coffee ground. Hiro smiled. And then he stopped smiling.

He didn't want anyone to see.

He slipped his feet out of the buckles, flailing as he bounced onto the ground. It was always a little weird getting used to the steadiness. The concrete didn’t shift, didn’t twitch, and Hiro felt a little dizzy as he clambered up the flight of stairs leading to the door.

They had a new sign. White. No dents. Neat letters. Soft curves.

_We’re open! Come on in!_

Hiro frowned at the new sign. It was a little too - aggressive. And as he pressed his shoulder against the glass door, he debated on wether to tell Cass about the fact that he didn’t like it. And then he reminded himself that Cass was a stranger who worked in a cafe, and that Hiro was a stranger who bought cheap filter coffee at said cafe. Sometimes, he got lost in overestimations. He couldn’t just tell her he didn’t like the sign. But it was an instinct, a habit he needed to get rid of because it was messing with his brain. The universe was messing with his brain. Nothing new. It was like Hiro was it’s favorite play thing. He probably struggled too much. Fucking fun.

The bells chimed above his head. Hiro smiled. He let it drop. His chest was too warm.

The inside of the cafe was quiet, a calm kind of quiet that made him think of afterglows and the state of mind you were in when you watched the sun spread its arms into the sky. It was the best time to be here, right when it opened in the early morning hours. You could sit next to the window and watch the sky open its eyes, watch it wake up. And he liked the feeling he got when he sat and watched and waited. Sometimes, he’d get all gooey, and he'd have this weird inkling of these sensations being familiar. But it was always distant, like burrowed memories, things hiding in the creases of his brain. Shit like that. Hiro would never let anything get too far. He'd shrug it off, and sometimes he'd actually succeed.

Hiro squeezed himself onto the armchair next to the store front window. It was his favorite chair in the whole entire world. Something he hated to admit.

He slumped into the scratched up cushions, squishing his spine further and further into the leather until the strain made his legs ache. He rested his feet onto his board. He kicked it on, and it lifted itself off of the hardwood floor, hovering from left to right in steady motions, as if his toes were drifting over waves. The Beatles were playing in the background. Octopus’s Garden. They only ever played The Beatles. Hiro didn’t mind.  
The first beam of sunlight hit his features, and he watched and waited and smiled a little longer than he wanted to.

"Good morning."

Hiro twitched. His smile dropped.

That wasn’t Cass. Cass hung an exclamation mark after each and everything she said. Hiro shifted in the chair, turning to peak at the counter.

"Coffee, right? No sugar, no milk? Small?"

A boy was standing next to the cash register. That was definitely not Cass - but that was his usual order. The other boy was smiling. All big and bright. The epitome of a nice smile. Wide open. It was unfurling the bottom of his slender face, stretching the corners of his mouth all the way to his ears. He had funny ears. They were big. They made him look like a child - a tall child with broad shoulders and slender legs and big hands. Big hands. The kind of hands that reminded him of warm burrows and deep heart lines.

He was wearing a baseball cap. Inside. Who still wore baseball caps nowadays? This guy's sneakers looked like mint candies for fuck's sake. They were a pain in his peripheral vision.

Hiro watched him weave himself through the constellation of coffee tables and chairs, big hands clasping a pen and a notepad. Big hands.  
The boy stumbled as he squeezed himself past a shelf full of tea cups. "Whoops. Sorry, 'bout that."

Hiro didn’t know why he was apologizing. Maybe he was apologizing to the shelf. He seemed the type. Maybe. Probably.

"That was right, right?" the other boy asked. He was standing in front of him. Towering. Or maybe Hiro just couldn’t deal with the angle. The boy flicked the bill of his cap out of his face, and he was looking down at him. He had nice eyes.

Timber. Remote cabins. Itchy warm cardigan sweaters bunching around fingers and mugs of green tee. Afternoon glows in October. Cozy.

Lukewarm.

The boy was saying something. It sounded like gibberish, like Hiro was listening to him from the bottom of a lake.

"Or... is there another kid with Kaiju Krogar sweaters and hover boards that comes here at six a.m. on weekdays?" He lifted a brow so high it disappeared beneath the bill. Hiro was still staring. He couldn’t help shake the feeling of this guy needing a Beatle’s song playing in the background wherever he went. All comfy and sunshine. He smelled like it, too. Laundry detergent. Fresh. Hiro could smell it from all the way here.

The other boy’s smile wavered.

Pretty people made Hiro’s brain hurt.

"Okay...uh - sorry. I’m guessing that’s not you then?" He paused, tapped the tip of his pen against the notepad. Ball pen morse code. "New to this. Aunt Ca - uh - the usual barista gave me a rundown on the morning costumers. She’s sick today." He inhaled, chest puffing up, as if he wanted to continue. But he didn’t. Hiro’s board started creaking. The sound fed the tension that was cutting through The Beatle’s like a scratch.

"Yeah."

"Hm?" The boy raised both of his eyebrows until they disappeared.

"To the coffee." Hiro pressed his board to the floor. It stopped vibrating. "Yes, to - the coffee."

"Yes, to the coffee," the other boy repeated. His smile started to twitch, and then it was cracking him open. His teeth were trying to devour his face. Hiro’s chest started to get all gooey. His hands were woven into his sweater. He ripped them free.

"Cool. Okay. I’ll go get that...then...for you," he said. "The coffee. No milk, no sugar, right? Small?"

Hiro nodded. Once. It was one nod, the shift of his chin barely existent. The other boy nodded like some sort of answer to Hiro’s sort-of-a-nod. Hiro shifted on the chair, swinging his head back a fraction, just enough to make his hair fall further into his face.

"Cool board, by the way. Nice engine housings. I like the reflectors."

He said it like he knew what he was talking about. The boy leaned forward, staring down at the board beneath Hiro’s sneakers. Only now did Hiro realize that the shoelaces of his left sneaker weren't tied. He didn’t know why he decided to be bothered by something so stupid at this specific moment. They were shoelaces. The other boy probably didn’t even give a single crap about wether or not his shoelaces were tied - or if there bumps and holes in the rubber soles and indents caused by furry fat alien cat teeth.

"You make it?"

The boy was looking back at him. Cozy eyes. Too cozy.

Hiro nodded. He swallowed. His hair was tickling his eyeballs.

"Cool," the boy said. "Really cool." He was still looking at Hiro. Hiro felt like melting into his sweater until he was nothing but a human mush-puddle in an armchair. The boy blinked. He was still smiling. How was someone capable of smiling so long? It didn’t even look constipated. It looked so nice. It made Hiro want to smack it from his face, the way he swatted mosquitos in the sticky mid-July heat.

"Alright. Cool. Coffee coming right up."

He said cool too much.

Hiro managed another sort-of-a-nod. The boy stood there, staring down at him, waiting, or just breathing, or just taking something in that Hiro couldn’t see. And then his smile went small, and it looked even brighter than before, and The Beatle’s were humming away to "Here Comes The Sun". The boy disappeared behind the counter before Hiro had a chance to make his chest go quiet. He wove his fingers back into the mesh of his oversized sweater. He felt smaller in it, smaller than usual. The sun was blasting through the windows, and it was the first time Hiro thought it was a little too aggressive.

Today was weird.

Hiro couldn’t concentrate on watching the world wake up. He kept his eyes plastered to his untied sneaker. The other boy brought him a mug of coffee, a hue darker than the two eyes hidden beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He smiled, and Hiro frowned, and the guy kept smiling like his facial muscles weren’t capable of doing anything other than cozy affection. He tried to pick up a conversation: the weather, Obama, cool stuff, Christmas, the micro garden he was trying to grow in the guest bathroom.

Hiro couldn’t reciprocate. He just kept melting into his chair, hair bunching up in his face until he couldn’t see anything other than black tendrils and tiny rays of sunshine. And when the boy finally steered back to the counter to help another costumer, his coffee was cold. Hiro’s chest was boiling.

 

✦

 

"Morning, babe."

Hiro had just unbuckled his feet. He had jelly legs. His head was a jumble of scrambled brain matter. He was not in the mood for sewage-green hair and cheshire grins and babe.

"Fuck you, Kermit," Hiro mumbled as he shouldered his way past Chess. It was not much of a challenge. It was almost as if he liked it when Hiro shoved him around. Hiro didn’t like it as much. It was a trigger. It made his brain pulsate a little more than usual.

"Kermit...Really?"

Hiro ignored him, and shoved his backpack onto a free spot, waving a hand in the air. The motion sensors were always delayed. Just like everything else down here. The lights snapped on one by one, flickering and twitching until they were brighter than the sun. Hiro wished he hadn’t turned on the lights. The workshop was drowning in chaos. Everything was turned upsides down and inside out. Digital disarray. Nobody bothered keeping it in order - or god forbid,  _clean_. Everyone just used what they needed, not giving a single shit about putting anything back. There was no system in the workshop. There never was. It was a crooked collection of pieces falling into each other. Jumper cables here. Battery holders there. Hot tweezers stuck onto computer screens that had been forgotten to be turned off. Hiro picked up a micro flush cutter from the dusty floor. Somebody had left the remnants of a broken beer bottle beneath a table. Hiro clamped his bottom lip between his teeth. He inhaled longer than he needed to, louder than he wanted to.

"What’s up with you today? You look so-" Chess growled. Feral. "Angry. I like it."

Hiro whipped his head around, narrowing his eyes until the world started to distort and the boy in front of him was nothing but this blurry, black fracture with green blobs on its head. "Fuckable," Chess mouthed. Hiro dug his fingernails into his palms, knuckles strained and ready to rip right through that stupid green skull. Maybe he’d tear those stupid piercings out of his face first. This was definitely not what he needed on a Monday.

This was definitely not what he needed ever. Period.

"Seriously?" Hiro barely opened his mouth. It had sounded like a hiss. "Here? Where we work? With Bee in the vicinity?"

He pointed at a corner of the room. A large figure was leaning against the wall. Gargantuan and silent. In this light, it looked like Bee’s bald head was glowing from the inside out. It was blinding like staring straight into the sun or an atomic explosion. Bee’s head was like a shiny egg sitting on a mountain of flesh-colored silly putty.

"Bee loves to watch," Chess said. Hiro grit his teeth. Bee arched an eyebrow, a chubby middle finger plunging through the air. Bee looked like he wanted to eat Chess.

"Fuck you," Hiro said because he needed to create more tension in the already-strained-to-its-full-capacity atmosphere. Monday’s weren’t their thing.

Hiro fought his way to the cork board, trying his best to ignore Chess' cackles. It was like listening to a hyaena - a big-mouthed hyaena with ripped-up jeans and alt-rock tattoos and ADHD.

Bee stayed quiet. Bee would break the universe if he ever let a word slip.

Their boss had pinned their projects onto the board, crackly letters scratched into ripped napkins or bubblegum wrappers. Hiro rushed through his list, internally screaming because how was he supposed to finish it all by the end of the day? Blake was on a mission to kill them. All of them. Hiro debated on wether to punch screwdrivers through his eyeballs and just get it over with.

"So...I was thinking..."

Hiro groaned. Chess never thought good things. Everything inside of his head was plain toxic and bad, naturally horrible and really, really stupid.

"I was thinkin’ we go for a little test drive? You know...with your bot and stuff. Tonight? What do you say, princess?" Chess fought his way between Hiro and the cork board. His eyes were paler than usual, washed out, like the skies in his irises were wrung dry. He had _Vanessa_ written all over his hollow face. Hiro could tell. Hiro pretended like he couldn’t.

He swallowed, averting his stare to the cross tattooed beneath Chess' collar bones. It was just as ironic as it had been on the day he’d gotten it.

"Can’t." Hiro didn’t want to think about the tiny tin man slumped in his trashcan. He hadn’t had the guts to throw it away. Yet.

"What?" Chess' eyes went huge. "The fuck? Why? Your - I mean, your bot’s ready! I don’t know what you keep bitching about."

Hiro looked up. He had to shift onto his toes.

"It’s not ready."

"C’mon, Hiro." Chess huffed, and a puff of air split Hiro’s fringe in half. Chess' breath smelled acidic. Vinegar. Tobaco. Hiro shook his hair, forcing the strands to fall back into his eyes.

"Dude, It’s ready!"

"No. It’s not."

"Yes, it is!

"No."

"Please?"

Hiro didn’t know why Chess thought saying please would change the fact that, no, he didn’t have a bot. He did have something, but it was not a bot, not something that could win, not something he could be proud of.

"Pretty please?" Chess' voice was sugar-coated, and there was a smile ripping through his skull. It was like dumping rainbow sprinkles onto mold. Chess wasn’t capable of nice things.

The thought made Hiro think about the boy in the cafe the other day, the boy with the October eyes and the nice smile. Lukewarm. Chess was a million miles away from a nice smile. A million.

"Get your face out of my face." Hiro curled his fingers into the other boy’s bony shoulders and pushed him aside.

"That’s not what you said last week," Chess breathed. Hiro let go. He swallowed. His mouth was dry.

"Again." Hiro inhaled. "Bee’s in the room." Hiro exhaled, pushing all the tension out of his insides. But it was still there, and it was coiling his stomach into a knot.

"Bee!" Chuck shouted so loud Hiro's ears were ringing. Bee looked up from where he was staring at his fingernails. He looked so ready to hurt something - or someone. "Bee, my man! Leave! Hiro and I are going to have angry sex."

"Go have angry sex with Bee," Hiro spat.

 "That’s actually not such a bad idea." Chess smirked, and Hiro wanted to bash his teeth in. "Depends on wether it would make you jealous."

"Chess. You can screw whoever you want. I don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone."

And with that, Hiro ripped his list from the cork board, fighting his way back to his work table. Chess was staring daggers into his spine. He could feel it.

"So...that’s a yes to the bot fight?"

"That’s a no to everything that has anything to do with you." Hiro tried hard not to flail with his arms, but he felt like trampling around, shattering the earth beneath his feet like a raging child.

"I’ll pretend like that didn’t break my heart, sugar plum."

Hiro tugged his earbuds out from where they’d been dangling around his neck and beneath his sweater. He stuffed them into his ears so hard it hurt. He didn’t turn the music on.

"But what if I wasn’t there?"

Chess never gave up.

Hiro reached for his phone.

"No, look I’m serious!" The boy stumbled towards his table, squeezing himself onto his lap. Hiro shoved him off. Chess was kneeling, looking up at him with those giant pale marble eyes. He was twitching. Everything about him was twitchy.

"I’m sorry, okay?" His voice was too urgent to sound like an apology. "It’s just - You’ve been working on that thing since you’ve started working here. You’re a bot fighting prodigy! I mean, you could become a billionaire!"

Chess' finger was pressed into Hiro’s chest, right in the indent at the base of his ribcage. The boy's fingernails were bitten off, jagged, broken. His knuckles were vibrating.

"I mean, where’s that kid who wanted to take over the fucking world?"

Hiro’s chest went numb. He couldn’t feel Chess' fingers. Chess was an asshole. He hated Chess. He hated Mondays. He hated this place. He hated that broken bot in his trashcan. He hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything anymore. Nothing. And he hated himself, God, he hated himself. But he hated  _her_  more. So much more.

And then he realized that this - this right here, right now - was his life. Drinking coffee at nice places wasn’t real. It was a dream, a dimension where he pretended that all this wasn’t his life, that the person that stared back at him in scratched up dive bar mirrors was not him.

The scar on Hiro’s left temple started to throb, as if it was trying to fight for his attention. It was screaming, shattering his ear drums from the inside out.

"Chester...It’s not ready."

_I’m not ready._

 

✦

  
He didn’t question it anymore. Here he was again. It was early, too early, so early Hiro could still feel the night tapered to his skin. Dried sweat. Liquor memoirs. He was probably still drunk. It felt like he was trapped beneath a steady undertow, liquid rippling through the layers of his skin, as if it was flaking, as if he was human onion, coats slowly drifting apart.

He was most probably still drunk. A little.

Hiro had let Chess drag him to the arenas. He hadn’t fought. He hadn’t had a bot. And it was horrible. Hiro had watched all these fighters with their high-tech robo puppets, letting them bawl and thunder in the cages, and it had been the first time that he’d thought he’d lose against each and every one of them. Those hadn’t been normal thoughts. But Hiro has been thinking those thoughts a lot lately.

He was shifting. Things in his brain were being torn apart and rearranged. It was like he was changing, languidly turning into someone he never thought he’d be.

Someone who just couldn’t.

There was a cigarette clamped between his lips, and he was still debating on wether to light it or not. He didn't even smoke.

He could see the stars from here. He was lying on the boardwalk, legs angled onto the street, eyes plastered against the spectrums above. It didn’t take long for him to filter out the constellations. To others, the night sky was just this giant dome above their heads, painted with random dots and darkness. But Hiro could see it for what it really was. A system. A structure. Interstellar evolution. An eternal cycle of star clusters flickering and fading in the midst of their Nebulae. The galaxies were the manifestation of the balance between creation and destruction, power and surrender. There was life up there, life amongst the gas and dust. There was love and war and loss, realms trying to stay alive in the order of a cosmic dynasty. And Hiro wished - if just for a second - that he could hear it, the stories, the rhythms of their lives, all the things he couldn’t understand from way down here.

Hiro blinked. He was becoming crazy. He was thinking all the things he used to roll his eyes at when she mentioned them, when she stared up at the neon stars she’d stuck to their ceiling. The whole entire apartment had been a plastic night sky. He’d thought she was crazy. Apparently, Hiro was crazy, too. He missed her so much, so fucking much. And the more he missed her, the more his brain was changing - the more he felt like he just couldn't do this anymore. He didn't even know what _this_ was.

The lights of the cafe flicked on, cozy glows spilling out of the large windows and onto the pavement. Hiro could hear The Beatles. Finally.  
He stuck the cigarette back into the pocket of his sweater and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. They were burning. Everything was burning.

 

 

 

"Good morning."

Again, no exclamation mark. It was the boy. He was leaning against the counter next to the cash register, smiling like he was trying to replace the freaking sun. Hiro shook his hair into his eyes. He managed a sort-of-a-nod. The boy smiled until Hiro started to blink.

"Coffee? No sugar, no milk? Small?" He asked, already shuffling towards the back of the counter. Hiro didn’t know why he kept asking. He thought they’d established everything by now.

Yes. Coffee. No sugar. No milk. Small.

But then again, it felt like he constantly needed to fill the silence. Or maybe Hiro was just frowning more than usual.

"You look like -"

"Shit." Hiro deadpanned, slumping into his usual seat. The boy coughed. It was an adorable cough. People shouldn’t be allowed to cough so adorably.

"I was going to say you looked like you needed a coffee."

"Same thing," Hiro mumbled into his sweater. He had his shoes pressed into the cushion, legs tucked against his chest, face buried into his knees and the collar of his sweater. He smelled like sweat and smoke. Hopefully October Eyes could transcend his fruit-basket-smell onto him. Because he smelled really, really nice today. Nicer than usual.

A mug of coffee slid onto the table in front of him, big hands curled around the stained porcelain. Big hands. Hiro looked up.

"Here." The boy handed over a packet, waving it in front of his face, gesturing for Hiro to take it.

Hiro narrowed his eyes. The boy laughed. He had a nice laugh, the kind of laugh that tried to tickle its way into his stomach and sprinkle his walls with glitter. Rainbow glitter. It made Hiro want to hurl.

"It’s on the house. Just take it."

Hiro took it. Gummy bears. His brain went fuzzy.

"Cass went insane. We have a giant box full of those in the back." The boy cocked his head to the counter, dark hair flopping onto his forehead. He wasn’t wearing his baseball cap today. Hiro could see his eyes better. "Said...we needed freebies and everything. I can give you another one if you want. We have a ton."

Hiro wanted to nod, but he shook his head. The packet crumpled in between his fingers. He liked gummy bears. And he wanted to tell him that. He wanted to say thank you. He wanted to apologize for being the epitome of gloom. He wanted to ask him what his name was, and where Cass was hiding, and that he didn’t like the new sign hanging behind the door, because for some reason he was allergic to everything nice.

But Hiro kept his mouth clamped shut. He was pressing his teeth into the slots, so hard his jaw was droning. There wasn’t enough alcohol in his system for him to reciprocate. Or to just act normal.

"Cool sweater." October Eyes pointed one of his slender fingers at Hiro’s chest. Hiro swore he could feel it, that finger pressing itself against his skin and bone. The thought made The Beatles sound far louder.

Hiro was wearing an Android Alto sweater. The living, breathing stereotype of all underground punk bands. Hiro didn’t know if this guy liked the crappy font or if he actually listened to them. Because October Eyes looked like he listened to The Beatles 24/7 - and bird chirps in Spring and children’s laughter.

Maybe he’d just wanted to fill the silence, the way he always did. Hiro almost appreciated it. Almost.

The boy stayed a little longer, hovering, waiting for an answer Hiro didn’t know how to structure. His brain was caught in a neurological blender. The boy was still smiling. Hiro wasn’t looking, but he could feel it, like a breeze or like the rays of an overheated lightbulb.

And when he steered back towards the counter with another "cool", Hiro swore he could still feel that smile sticking to his skin. A residue. Lukewarm.

The cafe started to fill, people spilling in and out in a steady rhythm. Hiro had finished the gummy bears, washing them down with his semi-cold coffee and his gibberish-thoughts. But he hadn’t watched the sun grow out from the jagged horizon, the way he usually did. He’d been watching the boy - was still watching him. October Eyes took his time with each and every customer, handing out smiles like fucking birthday presents. And they looked genuine, as if he meant each twitch of his slender mouth. He had the face for smiling. He had the hands for helping. Hiro didn’t know him. Maybe he never would. But this was a _good_ person, someone who did _good_ so well, it seemed effortless, natural. And he fit so perfectly into this place, into this cozy little corner of San Fransokyo, into this dream - into Hiro's escape.

The boy was having a conversation with an old woman. He was leaning over the opposite chair from her, notepad and pen dangling from his fingers. He was laughing, and the woman was laughing, and it was like her wrinkles were disappearing one by one, like this kid was some sort of anti-wrinkle-magician. Hiro’s brain was melting. The boy kicked his head to the side, eyes holding Hiro's stare. Hiro flicked his attention back to the notebook in his lap. His brain was a puddle of goo. It was oozing out of his ears. Hopefully, October Eyes couldn’t see it from all the way there.

Hiro tried to concentrate on the designs sprawled across the pages, but they were all horrible, and he knew they were horrible, and he had no idea why he had opened his notebook in the first place. He was never going to be able to start anything with this. Not now. Maybe not ever. Chess was wrong. Like always.

Hiro's fingers spasmed around his pen. The plastic cracked.

"That looks really good. Yours?"

Hiro slammed his head to the side, so abruptly, he smacked his face into the leather of the chair. The boy chuckled. Hiro tried to hate it.

He looked back at the pages sprawled across his lap.

_Really good._

Bullshit.

Hiro tried to cover the pages with his elbows, but October Eyes was already leaning over the chair, looking down at them from over Hiro’s shoulder. It felt like a human cage. Hiro’s brain was literally leaking out of his pores.

"Bots, huh." He pointed at a tiny design squeezed into a corner of a page. "I like this one. Probably runs on impulses, right? I like the way you handled it with a smaller project board. Cool. Looks good."

He sounded like some dad praising his son. Obligatory praise.

Hiro narrowed his eyes.

The other boy leaned back, and it felt like Hiro could breathe again. He could feel his heart. It was still there. His brain - not so much.

"I major in Robotics Engineering," he said, and he looked so proud, it was like he was going to burst. The cafe would probably be stained with glitter and pastel colors for days. He took the empty coffee mug, holding it in his big hands. He had fingers for robotics. They were slender, nimble, tactile.

"I’m Tadashi, by the way." He smiled while he said it, and the words sounded like they were being pulled from left to right like chewing gum.

"Hiro."

"Hiro." Tadashi didn’t smile while he said his name. It was a small word slipping through his mouth, careful like he was scared he’d crush it with his teeth. Hiro was still trying to put his brain back together, but those fucking eyes made it all fall apart all over again.

This was getting borderline ridiculous.

"Nice to meet you." He dribbled his fingers across the mug. "Hiro."

And there it was again. His name coming from another mouth. And people said Hiro’s name all the time. They groaned it and cursed it and screamed it inches away from his face. But they never said it in a way that made it feel personal, too close for comfort, like knees brushing and hands touching.

  _Jesus Christ._

Hiro moved his head into a sort-of-a-nod. His hair fell further into his eyes.

"Hey! Champ! Your entourage is waiting in the back. Stop flirting with the customers," A voice boomed from across the cafe. They both whipped their heads around. There was a man behind the counter. He was slipping on an apron. The rest of the cafe looked like a doll house. This guy was a giant. He looked like the embodiment of surfing in the 80’s, just a little older and outdated, the kind of person who still said 'dude' while sober. The man was grinning, small wrinkles bunching.

Tadashi gave him a blank expression, mouthing something that Hiro couldn’t understand. It made the 80’s surfer smile a little wider. It was a nice smile, of course.

Of-fucking-course.

Tadashi took a breath, looking back at Hiro with those cozy, comfy cabin eyes. He wasn’t smiling. His mouth was just a little crooked.

"Dashi, you’ll be late for class." The man was fumbling around with his sandy hair. Hiro thought there should be an age limit for pony tails and rainbow tie-dye shirts.

"Yeah, got it!" Tadashi was still looking at Hiro. It was weird calling him that in his head.

Tadashi. Dashi. Tadashi with the October eyes.

"See you tomorrow...Hiro."

Hiro’s brain was crumbling apart all over again. He felt sick. This was sick. He blamed it on the upcoming hangover.

He wanted his name to be Tadashi’s new 'cool'.

 

✦

 

  
Hiro was late. He was so late. And it felt like that fact was nibbling at his whole entire human existence. It was like that feeling you got when you were seconds away from missing a train, not knowing wether you’d make it or not.

The night was rolling in fast like a High Tide. Shards of rain were piercing through his skin. Hiro was already drenched, and his board started wavering, as if it was a few seconds away from giving up. He should’ve recharged it. But Hiro was the kind of person who used something so long until it begged for mercy and withered away before he even had a chance to save it. But he didn’t want to think about that now. Now, he needed to get to where he needed to be. It was just coffee. Fuck.

_It was just coffee._

He hadn’t given himself a breather to stop and think and question. He’d been running a lot lately, far too active, far too rushed to let his brain click its gear teeth into the right slots. It felt like he was living in fast forward, everything crashing in on him at light speed. He hated time. It was never on his side; it never had been.

There was a tall figure standing at the door of the cafe, broad shoulders, slender legs - big hands. Tadashi was fumbling with the sign. Hiro kicked the heels of his feet to the back, the board upping its pace so quickly his stomach jumped. He was wringing out the last bar of juice. If it died now, he was not going to make it. His life felt like an apocalypse movie. He hadn't even had enough time to think about wether or not he was going batshit-insane. He’d already established that. He was crazy. He was mental.

The board zoomed over the street, dodging cars and columns of lantern lights. He reached the flight of stairs leading to the cafe, kicking his legs up, board slicing across the glass of the door and crashing to the ground. The figure behind the door stumbled backwards, hands bashing to find his balance and grip the door knob. The door opened.

It felt like Hiro’s chest was bursting from the inside out, as if the adrenaline from before had reached its climax, collecting itself in the middle of his ribcage and exploding. Splat.

Tadashi was standing in the door, light spilling out from behind him and slipping between his arms and legs. Hiro could feel the warmth trying to grip him, trying to coax him inside. He was cold. Shivering. This was stupid.

"Hiro?" Tadashi opened the door a little wider. "What are you doing here? We’re closed. It’s nine. It’s raining."

He said the last few words, as if it had been a sudden realization. And because the universe enjoyed fucking with Hiro, his board decided to give up right then and there and smack him across the metal railing.

This was really, really stupid.

"Fuck," Hiro groaned, lifting himself up from the wet concrete.

"You okay?" Tadashi was trying to help him up. Hiro hissed like a feral cat, stumbling back onto his feet, unbuckling himself and wobbling onto the ground. It felt like the bones in his legs had evaporated. Now all he was standing on was flesh and muscle and wet concrete. His clothes were drenched, his feet were squelching in his sneakers, his hair was sticking to his face, his eyes were burning more than usual. He probably looked like the saddest thing on earth.

"I’ll get you a towel."

Hiro pretended like those words were an insult. But his ears were rushing, and his ribcage was vibrating, and he wanted to be so pissed off, but all he managed to do was slump further into his oversized sweater.

 

 

 

Maybe it was a little too warm in the cafe, maybe because his skin was too cold to be considered healthy. But Hiro wasn’t healthy anyways. He just got by however he needed to.

Tadashi came back with a mountain of towels, dumping them onto Hiro like he meant it a little too well. Tadashi seemed like the person who had a tendency of meaning it too well, far too well. Hiro dug his face into the fluffy material. It felt like he was inside a cloud. It was a nice smelling cloud, fresh like a fruit basket.

"I thought you weren’t going to come today. No wonder Cass said you were a hardcore customer," Tadashi said, laughing in a way that made Hiro want to kick him in the groin. Because Tadashi wasn’t laughing at him. He was just laughing, just letting those trills reverberate through the atmosphere because they sounded so fucking nice. It was like he was warming up the cafe just a little more. It was scorching by now. Hiro was burning.

"Sit." It was a demand. Hiro hated demands. "Hiro, look - just sit."

Hiro took a deep breath, letting the fruit-basket-cloud tighten around his skull.

 _Fine_. Hiro sat.  _This was stupid._

He had his eyes closed. The world was dark and warm, and he listened to porcelain clinking and sneakers squeaking. The Beatles weren’t playing.

Tadashi was humming. Maybe Hiro even liked it a little more than The Beatles. But just maybe.

"Couldn’t go a day without the coffee, huh?"

"Sorry." Hiro mumbled.

"Hm?"

"You’re closed."

A laugh. A clink. A squeak.

"That’s alright. I was going to stay down here anyways. Studying."

Of course.

The squeaks came closer. The towels were being tugged aside. A puff of fresh air hit Hiro’s face. There was a mug hovering in front of his nose.

It wasn’t coffee.

"Hot chocolate. You - uh - look like you need some sleep." Tadashi almost sounded concerned. His mouth was small. No super smile. Hiro felt like a five-year-old child that needed to be taken care of. He probably looked the part. He definitely felt like it.

Hiro mumbled a  _thank you_  and wrapped his numb fingers around the hot porcelain. The edge of a towel slumped into his eyes. Tadashi snorted. Actually snorted. Even his snorts sounded spectacular.

Nobody touched the towel. Hiro liked it that way.

Tadashi bent his knees. They cracked. Crack. Crack. He was kneeling in front of him, and he was so close that Hiro inched back a little further, the fruit-basket-cloud swallowing him.

"You okay?"

 _Okay_.

Hiro wanted to nod, wanted to say yes because that was what you were supposed to say when a total stranger asked you if you were okay. When people asked if you were okay, it was more of a polite rhetorical question, something that didn’t need to be answered by anything other than a nod or just absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.

And Hiro didn’t know why he did it. He didn't know why this polite rhetorical question deserved an honest answer. He didn't even know if it was honest.

Hiro shook his head.

It was the first time he had admitted that in nine months and 21 days.

Hiro had just admitted that to a total stranger.

No, he was not okay. He was a crazy and on the verge of total insanity. And he was not okay.

It stayed quiet. Nothing but their breaths rushing.

Hiro wanted to disappear. He wanted to smash the mug onto the floor and rip his way out of the fruit-basket-cloud. He wanted to run and run and run, blast off into the sky, and leave all this bullshit behind. But he stayed quiet. He just breathed.

Tadashi stood up. Crack. Crack. He walked away. The Beatles started to play. He walked back. He sat down. Hiro knew that he was looking at him, staring, waiting.

Hiro took his time. His head made no sense. It was just mush. Like always.

And then Tadashi started talking. It was a steady pace, almost languid, but the words were spilling out of his mouth and onto the small coffee table, and Hiro let those words fill the empty gaps in his skull. Tadashi talked about normal things, things so normal, Hiro felt like falling asleep. But he didn’t. He was caught in this afternoon-like doze, lids heavy, skin tingling. He listened to Tadashi talk about his day, when he woke up, what he ate for breakfast, how he drove to school. He talked about his friends and that his aunt’s fiancé liked to call them his 'entourage'. Apparently, Cass was his aunt, which was why he was at the cafe at night in the first place. He lived upstairs - with Cass and the 80’s surfer, her financé. Hiro sort of missed Cass. But he didn’t mention that. He just listened. And Tadashi kept talking and talking until Hiro wasn’t thinking about himself anymore. It was like those words were tugging him out of his own head and coaxing him into another. And Tadashi’s head was a nice place. It was homey and balanced, everything moving in calm patterns.

"You want another one?"

Hiro looked up from where he’d been staring at the tiny discoloration on the coffee table.

"Wha - t?" His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat. He tried again. "What?"

"The hot chocolate." Tadashi pointed at the mug in Hiro’s hands. It was empty. Hiro hadn’t noticed. Hiro hadn’t noticed anything. It was like he was being pulled out of the bottom of an ocean. A calm ocean. A warm ocean.

"Oh."

Tadashi smiled. It was a tired smile, small, careful almost.

"No...I’m good."

"Are you?" Tadashi quirked an eyebrow - before it fell back down and his mouth started to shrink. "I - sorry. I didn’t mean to -"

"S’okay."

It wasn’t okay. But it was something close to it, something better than before. It was an almost-okay. But just for now. Just for here.

Tadashi looked down at his fingers. They were twisted into each other, entangled, like he’d been weaving them into each other over and over again.

"I didn’t get to ask you -" Tadashi shifted in his chair. He ripped his fingers out of each other and rubbed his eyes. "Why you were designing robots? Do you build them?"

Hiro nodded. His hair was falling back into his eyes. It was dry again.

Tadashi leaned forward, arms resting on his thighs. He looked like he was waiting for more. But Hiro didn’t have more.

"Is...it a hobby? I mean, what do you do?"

It was weird hearing that.

 _You_.

Hiro had only heard _I_ and _me_ for the past few aeons, and hearing that mouth say _you_ made him feel uncomfortable, the tingly kind of uncomfortable, the kind of uncomfortable that made his heart really loud.

"If you don’t mind me asking," Tadashi mumbled. He scratched the back of his neck.

"I work at a tweak shop." Hiro stared at the empty mug in his hands. Brown liquid was stuck to the bottom in a perfect circle. "I fix stuff."

Tadashi stayed quiet. It was like he was holding his breath, like he wanted to give Hiro as much time as he needed. Hiro still felt like a five-year-old.

"Used to...you know..." Hiro stopped.

_Bot fight._

That was a criminal activity. He didn’t know why he didn’t want Tadashi to know, just as much as he didn’t want him to know about his bumped up shoes and his thrift shop sweaters.

"Build bots," Hiro pressed out. "That was a long time ago. The bots...building bots."

"So the designs?"

Hiro looked up. Tadashi had his head angled to the side. It reminded him of Mochi when she watched him make cup noodles.

"I don’t know," Hiro said, letting a puff of air carry the words out of this throat. It felt like they were drifting, not really reaching their target.

"Don’t feel like building them. Waste of time."

"Building is never a waste of time."

"Sometimes it is."

Quiet. Just The Beatles in the background.

"So you fix things?"

Hiro nodded.

"Like what?"

Hiro wanted to laugh. He wanted to let out a fucking guffaw. But he wasn’t ready to let his ears hear that. He didn’t need them to, especially when there was another person in the room, inches away, head kicked to the side.

"Toasters."

"Toasters?"

"Toasters."

"Cool." It sounded amused. "So just toasters?"

"Toasters and other stuff."

"No bots?"

"No."

"Where?"

Hiro scrunched his eyebrows.

"Where do you fix toasters...and other stuff but no bots?"

Hiro had no idea why Tadashi wanted to know that. Maybe the silence was just too awkward to let it stay silent.

"Near Kurai."

Hiro felt a pang in his brain. He should’ve just said  _the underworld_. Kurai wasn’t a good place. Someone like Tadashi was probably told it was a hell hole - which it was, but it was way worse than it sounded. A triple hell hole.

"Okay." It sounded like a question. "Kurai. Okay." Again. A question.

Hiro didn’t know where to look. It was like the world decided to finally hit him again. He was in his dream, and with a single word he was being torn out of it. Hiro felt like a dark blob in a spectrum. This was the spectrum. Tadashi belonged to the spectrum. Tadashi went to SFIT. He was a fucking Robotics Engineering major. He built robots. He had good friends. He had a family and a nice smile. He had a future that people were supposed to have in a place like this - in this spectrum-world, with spectrum-people and their spectrum-smiles.

Hiro lived in the underground. Spectrums made his stomach churn.

And yet, here he was. His life was this ironic little particle spiraling through the universe.

"Cool," Tadashi said.

It didn’t sound cool.

Hiro’s feet twitched. He wanted to run.

He fought his way out of the fruit-basket-cloud. It was stupid. This was all so fucking stupid. Why was he here? Why was he talking to this person? Why did he care so much about what this person was thinking about him? Why?

Hiro stumbled, slamming the mug onto the table. Tadashi looked like someone had punched him in the face.

"Whoah, easy."

The other boy stood up, hands hovering in the air like they wanted to do something. Big hands.

"I - um - I need to - " Hiro twisted his leg out of the grasp of the final towel. "Go. I need to go."

He wobbled towards the door. He didn’t know where the door was. His orientation had evaporated in the heat of this place. But he found the door, and he tried to open it. It didn’t open.

"You need to - To the left. Turn the - left -"

Hiro turned the door knob to the left. The door opened.

"Are you sure you don’t want to -"

"Bye." Hiro cut him off, turning around the second the word slipped past his lips. His mouth was numb. Tadashi was right in front of him. Towering. October eyes so close he could count the creases woven around the pupils.

"Bye," Hiro said. It wasn’t a real word.

"Bye," Tadashi said. It wasn’t a real word either.

And when Hiro stumbled back into the night, he felt so stupid for not saying thank you. He should’ve said thank you. She’d said he should never forget that. His mother had taught him to always, always say thank you.


	2. Chapter 2

Hiro couldn’t go without the cafe for longer than two days. Two days were shameful. Two days meant  _bad habi_ _t._  Two days meant more than just a bad habit. Way more. Hiro couldn't go without it, without sitting and waiting and watching - just being in the spectrum and breathing in the warmer air. In a way, it was selfish. At least it felt selfish, as if Hiro was trying to take more than he was allowed to.

He was late on his rent. He'd been climbing out of his apartment using the fire escape so he could dodge his landlord. He hated landlords. Somehow, they were all assholes. Or maybe they just openly hated him, thus the apparent assholishness. Hiro was an asshole, too. It all fit together. His whole entire life was a crooked construction consisting of assholish people and even more assholish events. 

And somewhere in that decaying structure of shit, there was a tiny little glint, a shard of a spectrum, a lukewarm fracture that he didn’t want to smother. It was the only thing that kept him warm.

 

✦

 

"There’s my favorite customer in the whole wide world!"

Exclamation mark. A big one. 

Hiro shuffled through the door. His giganto sweater got caught in a group of chairs. He ripped himself free. Cass was standing behind the counter, chestnut hair a little disgruntled, as if she hadn’t bothered combing it after waking up. Her eyes were bright like morning dew and meadows. And she was smiling, and it was way too goofy for six a.m.. 

Hiro appreciated it so much. Far too much.

"Morning," he said, awkwardly waving a hand. The sleeves of his sweater were too long, and the material was practically eating his fingers. He felt like an octopus - or just something that didn’t have hands. 

Cass let her teeth show. Hiro could see the resemblance. There was a balanced niceness nestled into the creases of their mouthes. Thinking about cozy smiles made Hiro’s stomach drop a fraction. He twitched his head. He tried to ignore the fact that he was wondering where  _he_  was. 

Cass lifted her arms from where they’d been leaning on the counter. She walked around it, bottom lip clamped between her teeth like she was trying to hold back the biggest smile of all time. And with both hands thrusted into the air, she jumped around the corner.

" _Bam_! Baby bump!" She pointed at her stomach.

She smiled the biggest smile of all time. 

_Baby bump.  _

Hiro didn’t know what to do. What did people say in a situation like this? Congratulations on having a human being growing inside of you?

Cass giggled. She sounded like a child. 

"Surprise," she whispered, going small and waving jazz hands. Hiro smiled. And he let it stay on his face a little longer than he usually did. Cass looked down at the obvious bump on her belly. 

"Yeah, it was definitely a surprise...If you know what I mean? I’m gonna go have my first pregnant yoga class next week. I don’t know how I’ll deal with all those suburban moms. They’re all so -" She looked up, taking a breath, causing her stomach to expand into the room. "Suburban." 

Hiro didn’t really know what she meant by that, but he nodded anyways. He cracked another smile. At least it felt like a smile. He probably looked constipated. 

"Okay, bud. Sit. Breakfast’s on the house." Cass used her singsongy voice, and with another blip of laughter she flailed around the counter. 

"No - Cass, I -"

"Hey. No buts. These hormones usually turn me into a disaster. Enjoy this while it lasts. Also, be happy that I’m over the whole morning sickness phase. It was -  _fantastic_ ." 

Cass cocked a plucked eyebrow so high it almost disappeared. Tadashi could do that, too. Hiro didn’t know why he was thinking about Tadashi’s eyebrows. 

He huffed and steered towards his armchair. Cass grinned like always.  

"Hope Tadashi’s been taking good care of you. He’s my nephew by the way. In case - you know, you didn’t know. I’ve had to leave this place in the trusty hands of my two boys since Kiki quit. I’m busy dealing with this whole...thing...in my stomach..."

Hiro turned around and watched Cass turn the back of the counter upside down. She was a whirlwind, a toothy, pregnant whirlwind. 

"Yeah." He didn’t know what else to say. Tadashi had been taking care of him. 

The thought was a crack in his head. 

"I bet you’ve already met Leo?" Cass stabbed a spatula into the air like she was trying to swat a fly. "My sugar daddy." She snorted. Hiro snorted. Quietly. "He looks like Chris Hemsworth...just older...and sandier...maybe a little homeless-looking."

"Hey!"

The 80’s surfer fought his way through the beaded curtain in the back. His hair flopped onto his shoulders in waves, tendrils matching the patterns of his blue tide-dye t-shirt. It made his eyes pop. Indigo. Like those pictures on travel brochures to the Bahamas. He looked at Hiro. He smiled. He waved. Hiro waved back. Sort of. 

"You know I love you and your scruff!" Cass pointed her spatula at Leo’s wrinkly-tan forehead. He flicked it away. 

"Is that sarcasm I hear, oh, light of my life?"

"Yes. Leo. Shave that thing. Or I will... While you’re sleeping, so help me God!"

Leo laughed, and it was all low and gravelly like the "Ho! Ho! Ho!" coming from fake Santa's at crappy malls.    


Was he the father?  

"Hiro, right?" Leo took Cass’ spatula. She’d been digging it into his skull. Cass huffed. 80’s surfer looked at Hiro. "Dashi said I should give you more of these. Kid wanted to give them to you personally, but he’s been busy with his - robo stuff." Leo threw two packets towards him. Hiro couldn’t catch them in time. They smacked against his head. 

"Oops. Sorry." 

"All good," Hiro mumbled. He rubbed his forehead. Gummy bears. He was okay with being hit by gummy bears. Tadashi thought about Hiro. Tadashi thought about Hiro and gummy bears. He didn’t know what his heart was doing. It was raving in his ribcage. 

" _Robo stuff_?" Cass took back the spatula and swatted it against Leo’s head. "It’s a convention for -"

"Young Innovators of the Modern Age." He cut her off, winking at Hiro - because why the fuck not?

_Young innovators._

Tadashi practically had those words etched into his forehead. 

"Give him one more," Cass whispered. It was far too loud to be considered a whisper. 

"He’ll get fat."

"He’s growing. He needs to grow."

"And you think gummy bears are the way to go?"

"They are happy foods. Happy food is good for you."

"Right. I love you."

"I know, now get another one."

"Just because I’m not letting you eat them? You know, that healthy nutri-"

"Healthy nutrition is good for the baby." Cass lowered her octaves, all low and gravelly like a fake-crappy-mall-Santa. "Yes. I know. But the second she’s out of my uterus we’re going to iHop, and I will freaking eat."

So it was going to be a girl.  

"Fine."

"Until I’m obese."

"Wonderful."

"Until I explode!"

"Spectacular." 

Leo kissed her head. Hiro looked away. It felt far too intimate like he was watching something he shouldn’t. His stomach started to churn. 

He remembered the way she used to kiss his head, right before he went to sleep, before he closed his eyes and fell into the stars. Lukewarm nebulae. 

And Hiro looked over at Cass, and she was looking at Leo like he meant something, and Hiro realized that there was no space for him here. It was already full. He didn’t know why he minded so much. He usually never minded. But being here and seeing all this made him feel like a glitch. He hated spectrum-people. They made him feel. It was the way they were so nice and warm, the way they gave him all these spectrum-smiles. But spectrum-people smiled all the time. They didn’t just smile at Hiro. Hiro wasn’t some sort of exception; he was just another person they could smile at. 

But Hiro wasn’t a person. Hiro was a blind spot.

The sun came up, and the world was warm, but the temperature dropped a million degrees in his chest.  

 

✦

 

There had never been a moment in Hiro’s life where he’d felt so uncomfortable that he'd wanted rip his skin apart. It was a strange feeling, like there was this heat in his belly that screamed for him to tear and break and shatter -  _everything_. He felt like exploding. It was so hot. Everything was so hot. Unfamiliar. Feeling like this was terrifying. 

And yet everybody around him seemed so perfectly at ease. They felt comfortable. They didn’t feel like cracking their skulls wide open. They felt the way normal people should feel in normal situations. Because this was a normal situation. Hiro just couldn’t make it feel normal. 

SFIT looked even more horrifying at night. It was this giant, lit up world of concrete and glass and perfectly shaped trees. It literally looked like the place where ideas were born and futures were made. It looked so ambitious that Hiro felt like screaming at every single inanimate object in his way. He stumbled over the flight of stairs leading to the main hall. He wanted to scream at the concrete below. It was so fucking stupid. Stupid, stupid stairs. 

Why was he here? Why did he google this stupid convention in the first place? Wasn't this technically trespassing?

_Young Innovators of the Modern Age.  _

The title already made him want to throw up. Angry-hurl. If that even existed. Hiro would be the inventor of the angry-hurl. 

Kids shuffled past him, so eager to burst through the glass doors with their spectrum-smiles. Hiro hovered. He didn’t know if he really wanted to do this to himself. It made his chest hurt enough just standing on these stupid flight of stairs, staring up at this stupid building that was lit up brighter than a freaking supernova. He couldn’t see the stars from under the dome. It felt like he couldn’t breathe. 

"Sorry. Excuse me." 

A man gave Hiro a small smile, gesturing for him to step aside. Hiro did. He thought 'excuse me' had withered away from the English language a trillion years ago.  

Hiro wasn’t used to politeness. In a world like this, politeness was like an open invitation to rip you apart. Or maybe it was just like that in Hiro’s world. 

This world was different. 

 

 

 

The hall was bursting at the seams. Knowledge. Innovation. Heavy crowds. 

It was like you could actually see the lightbulbs glowing above their heads, filaments so eager to shine brighter than any other. Everything was moving at light speed. The earth was spinning faster here, faster than anywhere else, and Hiro was being hurled into the rapid rotation, trying his best not to crash into the ground. Everything was alive. Everything was meant to do something, to be something. All these people were here for a reason. The air they breathed was important. None of them were a waste of space. None of them were withering away. They were paramount. Each and every one of them was a crucial part of the atmosphere. 

This was what significance looked like.  

Hiro almost felt bad for breaking the pattern, for being a crack in this gargantuan, collective lightbulb. 

He tugged at his sweater. He looked down at his bruised sneakers. There was dirt crumbling from the rubber soles, brown blobs messing up the linoleum floor. It was so polished he could see himself staring back. 

Eyes wide. Mouth small.  He shook his fringe into his face. 

Hiro wove himself through the crowd, trying his best not to rub off his crookedness on any of these prepped and primmed and perfect people. He kept his eyes plastered to the ground, never daring to look at anything other than his crumbling sneakers. It was like they were deteriorating with each step he took further into the lightbulb. All the other shoes were polished. All the other laces were woven into pretty little bows. Hiro felt like opening all of them and tying them all together. Or maybe he felt like letting Mochi loose. She'd be in shoelace paradise. 

His thoughts were going berserk. 

This was not a good idea. None of this was good. Things never ended up being good when Hiro did things on impulse. It was like he had an adrenaline-junkie living in his head, a daredevil, a madcap, someone who constantly pushed him to do all the stupid things he was taught never to do. But doing this wasn’t like breaking into a car, or shoplifting, or starting a bar fight at three in the morning. 

This was different. 

He missed the cracks and creases, the shadows that could swallow him whole. 

And here - in plain sight - it felt like someone was blasting a giant laser pointer onto his scalp. 

Hiro’s lungs were deflating. He couldn’t breathe with all these lights on. He was far too visible. Dodging hightop stares, and perfect elbows, Hiro fought his way to the nearest wall. He pressed his finger against the metal, digging his nails into the tiny indents. It was a structure he could hold onto, a moored buoy that kept his head above water. He could feel their stares. He swore he could feel them burning themselves into his shoulder blades like brand marks. 

_Intruder.  _   


He was pressed against a wall, and yet it felt like he was in the center of everything, the world molding around him, towering, looming, ready to crash on him like a tidal wave. 

Hiro looked around. 

Nobody was paying him any attention.  They were all facing the opposite direction.

There was a stage on the other side of the hall. It looked like a giant linoleum block drowning in limelight, pulling the crowd in like moths to a flame. 

"And that was Akira Kobe with her solar hover-panels." 

Applause. 

Hiro hadn’t noticed the man standing at the other end of the stage, small and round like a marshmallow in a suit. The man had a microphone pressed against his mustache. It almost looked like he was ready to eat it. The microphone. 

"And our next young innovator is twenty-one year old Tadashi Matsuno." Mustache spread an arm to the left, smiling so wide his cheeks were leaking red.

Hiro’s stomach dropped a million feet.  

The curtain moved, mint-colored sneakers stumbling out from the back. And then there he was, the brightest thing in the room. He didn’t need the limelight.

Tadashi Matsuno was glowing from the inside out. 

He had this giant grin opening up his face, ears flushed, eyes polychromatic. And he was looking at the crowd, and it felt like he was looking further, past the walls and the city streets, across the ocean and every place beyond. He was wide open, unmistakably visible to the rest of the universe. And he didn’t look afraid. Not one bit. It was like he was basking in it - in the feeling of being in full view. 

"Hello. I’m Tadashi Matsuno, and I’m on a mission to save the world."

And that was it. That was literally it. He had them. Tadashi had the world transfixed. He was smiling, and the crowd was smiling, and Hiro was smiling without wanting to let it drop. He’d never seen Tadashi like this. He’d never seen what effect he had on others at this magnitude. It was the right time to use magnitude. Because this was  _magnitude_ . And now, Hiro saw. He could see it everywhere. One smile, and Tadashi had the world in his palms. 

Something started to corrupt Hiro's smile. Something mean and resentful. There was a part of him that wished he could stand in front of thousands of people without crumbling to the ground within the first five seconds. Hiro's hands were fists. His smile wavered with each blink, with each image of the boy with the sun on his shoulders.

Hiro couldn’t do any of that. All Hiro could do was hide. 

Tadashi was so calm and steady. It was like he was sure to take his time and make each word count. You had to watch him. It was like some sort of foreign gravitational pull that tethered you to his direction. And only now did Hiro realize that they were all breathing in-synch, harmonizing their rhythms with the boy in the limelight. And when Tadashi introduced his healthcare robot, Baymax, Hiro didn’t know how someone like him could actually exist. A healthcare robot. A freaking robotic nurse. A creation to be used for the better of humanity or some shit. Baymax was big and fluffy and awkwardly charming, and Hiro didn’t know what else he had expected. Because there he was - Tadashi Matsuno - this fucking shooting star, and it felt like he was too far for someone like Hiro to reach. Tadashi was all the way up there, and the flex of Hiro’s fingertips wouldn’t be enough to grasp him.  

This was stupid. God, Hiro was being so, so stupid. 

He didn’t know what he thought was going to happen. He didn’t even know why he was here. 

_Why are you doing this to yourself?_

This place made him feel like less. Seeing Tadashi up there - way up there - made Hiro feel so much smaller than he already was. He wasn’t supposed to be here. These feelings weren’t good for him, weren’t healthy. Did he genuinely want to feel sorry for himself? Is this what his life had come to? Pity? Fucking pity?

And this was everything he needed to know. He was never going to be real enough up there. Way up there. His brain would never be bright enough for a crowd like this. His smiles would never be nice enough. There would never be a time where Hiro wouldn’t curl further into his sweaters and hide behind his hair. 

Tadashi turned. He was looking at him. He could actually see him. Or maybe he couldn’t, and Hiro was imagining things - stupid things. Tadashi’s smile widened into a grin, eyes still locked into his direction. It felt like a bolder was ramming into Hiro's chest. Tadashi flicked his fingers. It almost looked like a wave. Hiro didn’t know how to make his lungs function properly. It was like they were trying to burst him raw and open. He didn’t understand the world anymore. 

He was boiling and cooling off, falling from cliffs and slamming into the bottom over and over again. Nothing felt right. Nothing was working the way it should. Someone had crumbled the galaxy and decided it would be hilarious to put the pieces back the wrong way round. 

But Hiro was already the wrong way round. Now it was all just a little more crooked. 

And then the crowd started to cheer, and Tadashi disappeared behind the curtain, and Mustache was trying to eat the microphone again - and Hiro’s lungs couldn’t cling to enough air. 

This had been the worst idea in the history of Hiro’s - inconveniently repetitive - bad ideas. And so Hiro did the only thing he was phenomenal at. 

_ Leaving_ . 

Hiro tried his best not to hurl his legs into a sprint. His steps were as rapid as he could let them be without drawing too much attention to himself. But everybody was far too preoccupied with staring up at the next 'Young Innovator' to notice the tiny boy with the giant sweater and the crumbling sneakers. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being seen. It still felt like they were all watching, staring, realizing that he was actually there.

The glitch. The mute fracture in their spectrum.

 

✦

 

A pit full of shadows. There was no other way you could describe this part of San Fransokyo. It was dark. It was always dark. It smelled like smoke and sewage toxins and bad decisions. 

Kairu. 

Hiro didn’t think places like this deserved to have a name. Places like this were errors on the radar of the world. Places like this were Bermuda Triangles. Hiro lived in the middle of nothing. But that was okay. He could hide so much better in nothing. 

The pits were full, crowds of living, breathing splinters growing out of the cracks in the alleyways. Hiro pulled his hoodie over his head. It was an instinct. Not wanting to be seen. But nobody could see anybody down here. You were translucent. Smoke. Nothing was real. 

A few lanterns were cracked, their lights constantly twitching in the midnight hour. A few passers-by bumped against his shoulders. They snarled like animals. Hiro snarled right back. He’d bite them if he wanted to. They’d bite, too.  This was better. This was all so much better. He could breathe less down here. It was better than drowning in spectrums and limelight and polished air. This was rugged. This was all broken. Hiro could deal with shards and fractures and damaged little things.  

He kept his head low, eyes tracing the wet concrete like he was following a map. He didn’t need a map, of course. Not that he had ever needed anything that showed him where to go.  The neon lights were seeping into the puddles, and the technicolor reflections spiraled like gasoline. It was strange, how things so bright weren't strong enough to keep away the darkness.  Heavy rhythms pounded through the walls. Midnight hymns. The night life was swinging towards its climax. Everything was a haze of twitches and trembles.  There was a crowd gathered in front of the Spectrum. Drunk. Loud. Breathing in the smoke like they were starving. Some already had their bots out. The next fight was soon. The music was getting louder. The air was getting thicker.  

Hiro slipped into a back alley, past dumpsters and makeshift homeless shelters. A dark figure was leaning against the backdoor, neon lights setting fire to his green skull. The tip of a cigarette was fizzing between his lips. Hiro could taste the tar.  

"Well, look who showed up," Chess said, the cigarette turning the words into mumbles. "Thought you had super important business to attend to. Who’d you screw this time, princess?"

"That’s getting old fast. Chess." Hiro hadn't meant to spit. But Chess was a name you could only either spit or hiss. 

"You know I like you when you're all angry." Chess bared his teeth. He sucked in the smoke, and his cheeks hollowed out. He looked like a skeleton wearing skin, the size a little too small. 

"Yeah, I know," Hiro said. He kicked an empty beer bottle against the closest brick wall. Clank. Chess twitched with his shoulders. 

"You look like shit," the boy said. It almost sounded like a compliment

"You too."

"I always look like shit. You just manage to not look so shitty...Don’t know how you do it." 

Chess wove his cigarette around like a shaman using a smudge stick. 

"I stay away from Vanessa," Hiro said, and he sucked in a puff of smoke. It made him cough. Chess stopped spiraling with his hand. 

"Touché." He cocked an eyebrow. His left eyebrow wasn't really an eyebrow. It was a collection of metal rings. You could see light strands of hair melting into the skin beneath. He was blond, the palest kind of blond that Hiro had ever seen. "One to zero for Hiro Hamada. But the night’s still young. Let’s see what’s up in the morning."

Chess sounded amused. Hiro's stomach started to bubble. 

"So you’re not even gonna deny it?" Hiro asked. It wasn't really question. It definitely didn't feel like one.

"Deny what?"

"That you’re back to being her lapdog."

The other boy flicked the remaining stub of embers onto the pavement. He trampled it to death. His boots looked like they could make the earth break. 

"Holy crap, is that actual concern I hear?" 

"Screw you," Hiro spat. He couldn't stop spitting. Chess made him want to spit.

"Gladly," the other boy said, all cocky and stupid. He was so fucking stupid. 

"She’s not good, Chess."

"Who said she was? I’m not good either."

"Yeah. No shit."

"She can’t wait to see your bot."

The bubbling in Hiro's gut turned into full-fledged boiling. 

"What the hell did you tell her?" Hiro shoved Chess against the wall. He could hear it. The impact. The grit of his teeth. The crunch of his hair. Chess hissed, and he shoved right back. Hiro stumbled against a dumpster. 

His brain started to pulsate. It was like there was this giant vein in his frontal lobe. Pressure rising. He curled his fingers into fists. His palms were damp. 

_Breathe. Just breathe.  _

_Don't let it take over._

"That you had a fucking fantastic bot, and that you're going to kick ass!"

"It’s not ready." Hiro tried his best to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. It was a desperate attempt to cool the rising temperature. 

"How long are you going to play that fucking card?" Chess had his arms spread wide before he let them slap against his sides. It sounded like bones crashing against bones. 

"How long, Hiro?" Chess was coming back, boots breaking the concrete. Hiro stumbled against the dumpster. There needed to be more space between them. Chess couldn't be close enough for Hiro's knuckles to reach him. 

"Tell Vanessa to stay away from me," Hiro said through clenched teeth. 

"You’ve always been so talented at changing topics, you little shit!"

Chess was losing his patience. Hiro was going to lose control over his fists. 

"Look!" Hiro shouted. "It’s not going to happen, okay? The bot is not going to work! Tell Vanessa that I’m not stepping one foot into her cage."

"What do you mean it’s not gonna work? It’s ready, Hiro! What the fuck?"

Hiro got all up in his face. They were so close, their lungs were communicating, exchanging air and body temperatures. Chess was cold. Hiro was blistering. 

"Drop it, Chess." 

"She’s got 10k ready."

"I don’t give a shit. Tell her I don’t give a shit."

"You don’t give a shit about 10k?" Chess clasped Hiro's head between his hands, and he bent down, and their noses bumped. "Fucking 10k! Ten thousand dollars, man. That’s a fucking birthday present!" 

Chess' eyes were salt deserts. 

Hiro ripped his hands from his face. He let the boy's wrists go before his hands would've taken a shot at snapping them like twigs. 

"I don’t have a bot." It was a whisper.

"Oh my god!" Chess turned on his heels, his knobby fingers digging through his sewage hair. "First you have a bot, then you’re not ready, now - now you don’t have one? Make up your fucking mind!" He shouted the last word. It was lightning. The bolt hit its target - the bull's eye between Hiro's eyebrows. 

"It’s shit! Okay?" Hiro could shout, too. He could shout so much louder. He could shout his vocal cords raw. "It’s shit! It’s fucking scrap metal. I don’t know what the hell’s going on - with me. I don’t know how to do anything anymore. My life is -" Hiro grit his teeth.  "I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no fucking clue!" 

Chess whipped around. His eyes were ripped open so wide it looked like they were trying to explode through his face. 

"So, no!" Hiro pounded a fist against the dumpster. "I don’t have a bot, Chess. Tell Vanessa to go shove a chainsaw up her ass. I’m not going into that cage. I don't have a bot!"

"Jesus Christ," Chess hissed, rubbing at his ears, as if Hiro had hurt them. "Chill. Issues, man. Issues."

"Issues? Really?" Hiro couldn't make himself stop. If he stopped now, his fists would go nuclear. "You’re the one with the issues. That bitch tears you apart, and now you’re crawling back to her all over again. She doesn’t give a shit about you. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone. But do whatever the hell you want, Chess. Just don’t come to me asking for help when she dries out your stash. Because she will. She’s going to leave you - Like everybody else down here - She will leave you!" 

Hiro could hear his own voice in his head, in his skin, in the air rushing out of his nose and his mouth.

Chess didn't move. Hiro wasn't even sure if he was breathing. He was just standing there, staring, breaking up, not breathing. 

" Fuck you, Hamada." 

Chess turned his back on him. His boots didn't break anything. They moved like they were being careful, like they didn't dare make too much noise.

Chess disappeared through the backdoor, and for a split second, Hiro could hear beats and crowds - until the door slammed shut and all that was left was the throb in his forehead. 

Hiro slammed both of his fists into the dumpster. 

He did it again. He did it again. He did it again.

His knuckles were wet. 

 

 

 

The music inside of the club was an organism molding itself around him like a second layer of skin. He let it seep into his ribcage, let it mix with the neon lights and the smoke. Hiro tried to forget the world, tried to forget Chess and the broken things inside of his brain, tried to forget Tadashi and the limelights and the spectrums in his eyes. 

Hiro’s life was a landslide. 

And he hated how sure he’d once been about having it all in order. He’d just learned how to walk again, how to breathe properly, how to get out of bed and fight his way through another day. But now Hiro felt like running back in time and hiding beneath his sheets, locking the window to keep the stars out. To keep her out. But she was everywhere he went. She was all around him, spread across the hemisphere like acrylic paint. She was the reason for this whole fuck-up. It was all her. This was her fault. She’d left him behind, and Hiro hadn’t been ready, and now the world was back to crumbling and shaking, and he couldn't find shelter. 

Hiro was trapped inside of a bottle, drifting through undertow after undertow.

He looked up. It was a habit, looking up and thinking she was looking down. Watching.

But all he could see were neon lights and laser beams. 

He fought his way through the crowd, not caring wether he shoved a little too hard. They all shoved back. Hiro almost enjoyed it because he could shove even harder. He curled his hands into fists, knowing full well if he lifted them he was going to get into something he wasn’t ready for. He wasn’t ready to hurt. But he was in the mood for it. And that was never a good thing. Moods turned him into someone scary, someone who let the scar on his left temple define him. 

Hiro found his way to the bar. It was full. He snuck his way into the back. He was small enough, invisible enough. He stole a bottle. He didn’t care what was in it. He just took it and left the world behind. 

 

 

 

He was tired. He was drunk. He didn’t know why he was running. He’d forgotten the purpose of his legs a long time ago. 

Hiro tumbled through a tiny path between blocks, buildings so weak they looked like they were two seconds short from tumbling onto his shoulders. It felt like all sound was being sucked into a void. Hiro with it. 

The building at the end of the alley was just as bleak as it had been this morning. Nothing had changed in the past few hours. Hiro didn’t know why he'd expected anything to change. Today just seemed so different. 

He steered towards the bumped up car squashed beneath the fire escape. The windows were gone, jagged little remnants stuck to the rims like shark teeth. Its insides were rummaged, everything plucked away by wind and rain and time. It couldn’t really be called a car. It was a metal carcass rusting away all by its lonesome. 

Hiro called it Wilson. Just because. 

He clambered onto the hood, trying his best not to tumble to the ground. The world was turning around and around and around. It took him a few tries to keep his fingers curled into the flaking metal of the ladder. He pulled it down. He felt like hurling. Angry-hurling. 

He started to climb. It felt like forever. It was like Hiro was trying to reach the ends of infinity, giving the universe a better angle for throwing shit at his face. 

He reached the end. He bumped his head on something. He cursed. He couldn’t find the window. The window was moving. Windows were stupid. The lock was gone, but he found it. His key was gone, but he found it. It took him an aeon to get the key into the lock, but he managed to open it. 

Hiro fell into his room. It was dark and stuffy, and it smelled like Mochi had used the litter box to its full capacity.

It felt like the night was too tired to leave. 

Hiro shut the window. His stomach grumbled, but he ignored it. The only things in his fridge were expired milk and a not-quite-empty bottle of beer. He didn’t bother with turning on the lights. He just stumbled out of his jeans and shed his sweater and threw the empty bottle of whatever-that-was onto the floor. 

He crashed into the mattress. Mochi hissed. She was squashed beneath his stomach. He let her struggle until she curled up into a ball by his side. She was warm and fat, and Hiro pressed her against him like a pillow. She pricked his skin with her nails. She didn’t like being hugged - or having someone’s nose squeezed into the hollow at the back of her neck. She was even warmer there and a little softer, too. She whined. Hiro ignored it. 

His head was spiraling. 

Images of spectrums and words drowning in memories of limelights that couldn’t reach him in time. 

 

✦

"Yo, asshole, there’s some weirdo asking for you." 

Hiro looked up from where he was trying to fix the back of an LED display. His fingers brushed the panel, sparks eating their way up his knuckles. He hissed. He pulled his hand back. 

"Ah - motherfu - "

"Yo!"

"What?" 

"The weirdo."

"What weirdo, Chess?" Hiro was almost screaming. He’d been trying to fix this stupid thing for an hour straight. It didn’t like him. Hiro stared at his bleeding fingers. It didn’t like him at all. He was still angry at Chess. He knew Chess was still angry at him. Everything they’d been saying to each other had sounded like they were trying to gauge their eyeballs out with nothing but words. 

"Some weirdo...Looks like those kids on cereal boxes...Fucking smiling like a crazy person. Why the hell does a crazy person want to talk to you?"

_Smiling like a crazy person._

Hiro whipped his head up so fast his neck cracked. He forgot all about his fingers and the stupid LED display. His face went numb, chest warming up.  

"What?" 

"He’s got a toaster."

" _ What _ ?"

Chess rolled his eyes. He did it far too much. Sometimes, Hiro was scared they’d get stuck, and he’d have to stare at the sky forever. Then he’d smack into walls a little more. Hiro liked the image. 

"I’ll go tell him to leave." 

"No, wait!" Hiro flailed over his worktable. "I - uh-"

He strapped the goggles onto his head. He looked down at his sweater. He looked like shit. He hadn’t minded looking like shit this morning. He hadn’t minded looking like shit ever. His brain was messing with him. 

_Jesusfuckingchrist._

"I’ll go." Hiro let his fingers straighten his sweater, nails rubbing off the stains around the hem. They wouldn’t disappear. He wished he’d at least come to work with real clothes on. Not his pajamas. He was at work in his pajamas. 

Chess sneered. Chess had a face for sneering.

"Please, don’t tell me you’re fucking that guy, too, you dirty, little slut."

Hiro pressed his fists against his sides. His fingers were still sore. The cracks and tears were still burning. He didn't want to start another fight in the workshop. Last time had almost cost him his job - and his nose.

Chess was laughing, almost wheezing. 

"Fuck you," Hiro said. 

"Only if you helped out." It was practically a growl.  

Hiro shouldered his way past him. Chess laughed a little louder. It sounded like he was close to suffocating. 

 

 

The crazy person was still smiling. 

"Hi."

Hiro stared so long his eyeballs were burning. He was scared they were going to ooze out of their sockets. 

"Hi," he mumbled. "What are you doing here?"

Because what else was he supposed to say? Tadashi Matsuno was in his tweak shop. Tadashi fucking Matsuno. His eyes were too bright. His smile was too nice. He looked like a rainbow in the middle of a thundercloud. 

"My toaster broke." Tadashi lifted the toaster. It was mint-colored. Just like his sneakers. How was someone capable of looking this color coordinated while holding a toaster? It was a freaking toaster. 

"Is this a joke?" 

"No, you can check. It’s really broken." Tadashi wiggled it in the air. The insides clanked. Hiro hadn’t realized that he’d been shaking his head. The world was moving like a colossal seesaw.  

"Okay?"

"Okay." Tadashi’s smile widened until the tips of his front teeth were showing. They were white. "So...you’ll fix it?"

Hiro couldn’t stop shaking his head. It was so surreal seeing him here, in Kurai, a few steps away, close enough to touch. But it still felt like he was somewhere way up there, somewhere so far up that Hiro couldn’t really see him. He was a dot in the sky. 

"How do you know where I work?" Hiro lifted a hand, ignoring the way the sleeve of his sweater was a few inches too long for his fingers to be visible. He rubbed his eyes. Maybe Tadashi was just a hallucination. Maybe Chess had roofied him with the shitty smoothie he’d shoved down his throat as a peace offering. Hiro should’ve known. Chess and peace offerings were like bare feet and dog shit. 

Didn’t go well together. 

"You told me." 

Hiro looked up, eyebrows scrunched. He’d lost track of this conversation a while ago. This wasn’t real. 

"You told me where you worked..." Tadashi clamped the mint-colored toaster between his arm and his torso. He was wearing a scarf. Tadashi was literally the only guy on the planet who could wear a scarf without looking like a douche. Nothing about him looked douchey. He just looked comfortable, like your childhood bedroom.  

"No, I didn’t. Not exactly."

"I - uh -" Tadashi took a gulp of air, his free hand scratching the back of his neck. He stared at the fan dangling from the crooked ceiling. Two blades were chipped. "I sort of visited every tweak shop in the neighborhood. 12. I almost got shot at number eight... "

Hiro’s jaw felt like it had dislodged itself. "Holy shit."

"I was joking."

"That was - horrible."

"I know. Sorry."  

Tadashi’s smile dropped. Hiro wanted to tumble forward and grip his mouth and just pull it back into place. 

"So?" Tadashi leaned forward, weight on his toes. 

"Huh?"

"The toaster?"

"Are you serious?"

"It’s broken." The other boy held the toaster in front of Hiro’s nose, so close he could smell burnt stuff. 

"Yeah, I - got that part." Hiro took a step back. Tadashi took a step forward. 

"You want me to - " 

"Fix it. Yes." Tadashi nodded. Hiro was still shaking his head. He really, really wanted him to be a hallucination. Maybe he was talking to the storefront. Maybe he was having a conversation with himself. Tadashi shifted. His sneakers squeaked. He nudged his head towards Hiro. 

"Cool glasses," he said. 

"Goggles," Hiro said. 

"I know." 

Hiro twitched his head to the side, narrowing his eyes until Tadashi was a blur with a mint-colored blob in front of his chest. 

"Okay." Hiro inhaled, swallowing so much air the bottom of his throat was droning. "I’ll fix it. It’ll take like - a few minutes. You can wait over there." He pointed at the shabby couch near the shabby window. The cushions were covered in green bruises. Mold and other fun stuff. Hiro pressed his bottom lip upward. His mouth nudged the bottom of his nose. "Or you could pick it up. Either that or you could -"

"Watch?"

"What?"

"Can I watch?"

Tadashi took another step closer. 

Sirens started howling. Red lights started blinking in rapid intervals. Lots of warning signs. 

Hiro wanted to retreat a little further, but he bumped against a shelf. It wobbled, almost toppling over if Tadashi hadn’t surged forward to keep it in place. Hiro held his breath. Tadashi’s hand was pressed against the metal, right in the space between Hiro’s neck and his left shoulder. His skin was tingling there, warming up, as if it was sucking the heat out of the foreign flesh a few inches away. 

"Okay?" It was a squeak. Hiro swallowed a clump down his throat. It gooed up his ribcage, made everything stick together like it was chewing gum. 

"Cool," Tadashi breathed. Hiro could feel it. His air. Tadashi’s air. The air that had been inside of his body, warming up and tumbling around. It smelled like mint candy. 

Tadashi was a little closer now. His eyes were swallowed by the shadow cast by the bill of his baseball cap. They were still so bright. It was like they were glowing from the inside out, like there were sparks in his head, like there were flashlights attached to the back of his corneas.  

"You weren’t at the cafe."

Hiro hadn’t been at the cafe for over a week. He was going through some sort of withdrawal. It made him all twitchy. 

At least Tadashi hadn’t mentioned the convention. He hadn’t seen Hiro. That was good. 

"I was worried," Tadashi said. 

That wasn’t good. 

Hiro’s stomach was free falling. He couldn't see Tadashi's stomach. That stupid scarf was in the way. 

Hiro jerked, feet pushing him away from Tadashi and his freaky flashlight eyeballs. 

"It’s downstairs." It sounded like a shout. Hiro hadn’t meant to shout. Or maybe his ears had just gotten far too comfortable with Tadashi’s tendency to turn every word into a puff of soft little syllables. 

Tadashi was still leaning against the shelf. He was staring at Hiro. He had big eyes, really big eyes, so big they looked like they could see everything. Maybe he could see right through Hiro’s head. Maybe Tadashi knew what was happening to Hiro’s brain.

Hiro turned around so fast he almost toppled over. He was dizzy. 

"The workshop," he said. "Just - ignore the guy with the green hair."

And with that, he kicked the metal door open and wobbled down the stairs. Tadashi followed him. Hiro pretended like he couldn’t feel him staring holes into the back of his head. He hadn’t combed his hair. Not that he owned a comb. He didn’t know why was thinking about hair and combs. Those were things he never dared to think about. Stuff like that was a waste of time. But now he was walking down the stairs with his pajamas and sleep-disgruntled hair, and he wished he didn’t look like such a hobo. 

 

 

 

Tadashi was like a random, intruding puzzle piece. He didn’t belong to this puzzle. This was a dark puzzle, a chaotic jumble of scrap metal, crooked ceilings and dying lightbulbs. This was a mess. Tadashi was too clean to fit into it. Wherever he situated himself, he was a technicolor fragment in a black-and-white silent film. He had a smile on his face, but it looked a little corrupted, as if he was scared to let it shine too bright. Or maybe this place just smothered all bright things. It wouldn’t surprise Hiro. Places like this had the tendency to kill off all joy before it even got the chance to unfurl itself. 

"You can sit over here." Hiro dragged a bar stool to his work table. He made sure to create enough distance between his chair and the bar stool. He didn’t want Tadashi too close. His chest was already too warm to be considered healthy. 

Tadashi had a hand hooked onto the back of his neck. Hiro knew what regret looked like - even on a different face, even on a nice face. 

Well, wasn’t this just fucking fantastic?

Hiro kicked the barstool into a less crooked position. It slumped to the side. 

"Yeah - it’s -"

"Okay." Tadashi cleared his throat. "It’s okay."

Their eyes stayed plastered against each other.

Hiro ripped himself free, averting his attention to the toaster Tadashi had settled onto the free spot on his worktable. Even the toaster was too perfect. No scratches. No dents. It was probably the prettiest toaster in existence. 

"He can't be down here."

Chess was leaning over his worktable, staring death lasers into Tadashi’s skull. Tadashi looked like a scolded kitten. 

"Shut up, Chess. Blake's not here." 

Hiro gave the barstool another kick. He nudged his head towards it, gesturing for Tadashi to sit. The other boy gave the barstool a timid look. He poked it a little like he was scared it would bite.

Chess laughed. Hiro flicked a rusty nail into his direction. Tadashi was far too preoccupied with analyzing the bar stool to notice the battery holder being flung against Hiro’s forehead. Hiro tried to burn Chess' hair from his skull with nothing but his eyeballs. Chess bared his teeth. He looked like he was going to eat anything that came too close to him. 

Tadashi sat. The barstool slid down with the weight. 

This was horrible. All of this was horrible. 

Tadashi giggled. Actually giggled. Chess made a hurling sound. 

This wasn’t real. 

Bee thundered down the stairs. His head looked like a contained nuclear explosion in an egg. He stared at Tadashi for so long Hiro thought someone had put the world on pause. 

This couldn’t be real. 

"So what happened?" Hiro asked, trying his best to chase the awkward silence away. The silence scrambled. The awkward stayed. 

"Hm?" Tadashi’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his cap. 

"The toaster. What happened to the toaster?"

"Oh...uh...it broke."

Hiro snorted. He didn’t really know what else to do. This was so fucking weird. Tadashi stared up at him, eyes so big they looked like Jupiters. 

"Yeah - no shit," Hiro said. He looked back at the toaster. "I mean - what happened?"

"No idea," Tadashi shot the words out like a bullet. Hiro scrunched his eyebrows. 

"Right," he mumbled. 

The silence came back, static that tried to asphyxiate everything in the room. Chess was trying to kill Tadashi with his eyes. Bee had retreated into the back of the workshop, fiddling around with his projects. It looked like he was just stacking things onto each other in hopes they wouldn’t fall apart. Like metal Jenga.  

 

 

 

"You broke it on purpose," Hiro said, once he screwed the final nail back into the right place. He scrubbed at a dark spot on the mint-colored coating. 

Tadashi smiled. It was small, but it was there, and it made Hiro’s brain short-circuit. 

"Caught me," he said, smile flexing around the words. Hiro lifted an eyebrow. Tadashi shifted in his chair. It slumped a little lower, squeaking and creaking like it was complaining. 

"I saw you."

The words made Hiro’s chest go quiet. 

"What?"

"At the convention," Tadashi said. He was staring down at his fingers. "I saw you." He looked back up. It felt like those eyes were trying to fight their way into Hiro’s skull, like Tadashi was trying to crack it open and climb into the folds. 

"I saw you."

He was there - Tadashi - sitting in his head, rummaging through his matter like he was searching for something. Hiro didn’t know what was left to find. 

"I wasn’t there." Hiro felt like slamming his head onto something. 

"I’m pretty sure that was you." It sounded like Tadashi just knew. He sounded like he’d made up his mind. 

"I was just - I was -" 

_What? I was what? What was I doing there?_

Hiro didn’t know. 

"You were checking it out, right? I mean - your designs and everything. SFIT has an amazing Robotic’s program." Tadashi’s eyes started turning all bright and warm. He had a hand in his jeans, and he pulled out a scrunched up piece of paper. He slid it onto the table. It was a flyer. 

"There’s a convention coming up in a few months. Future Robotics." Tadashi’s fingers were pressed against the corner of the paper, keeping it there, keeping Hiro from throwing it to the ground and out of his way. It was blue. Bright blue. 

_Future Robotics Convention._

A word caught his eye, four letters printed onto the bottom of the page, right under the sponsors.

NASA.

Hiro's chest started aching.  

"I thought maybe - I mean, you have all these great ideas in your notebook. I thought maybe you’d -"

"No," Hiro said. "I -" He took a deep breath. "This is - I just - No." 

Tadashi’s eyebrows were turning into a question marks, but Hiro couldn’t find any answers. 

"Hiro, you - you built your own hoverboard. And those designs - The ones in your notebook. They're amazing!" Tadashi pressed a finger against the flyer. The paper crumpled. "This is a great opportunity." 

"No...You don’t understand."

_Stop trying to understand.  _

"I mean, I - I don't get why you're here." Tadashi leaned in closer, close enough for Hiro to feel his breath prick his skin.

Hiro’s fingers started to curl into fists. This wasn’t any of Tadashi’s business. This was Hiro’s life. Who the fuck did he think he was? He was messing everything up. He wasn’t allowed to say things like that. He wasn't allowed to be here. He wasn't allowed to help him.

_Help.  _   


Hiro didn't need help. Hiro didn't need any of this. 

"What are you afraid of?" Tadashi asked. The question made the world stop. 

He'd found something in Hiro’s head. He was poking at it, tugging at it. 

Hiro turned away. Tadashi was too close. Strangers weren't supposed to be this close. 

Hiro narrowed his eyes, nostrils flaring.

"Nothing," he said.

_Everything_ , he thought.  _Everything in my head._

 

✦

She used to call it her safe haven. It was where the rest of the world couldn't find her. It was her secret. That's what she liked to call it. Her secret. 

Hiro had never trusted himself with stepping foot in this place. He'd pretended to be busy. Busy pretending to be busy. 

He’d always wondered what it would feel like, being there, touching all the things she used to touch, seeing all the things she used to see. 

And now he was giving in. He was here. He didn't know why he was here. But he didn't know many things anyways. There were days where he felt like he didn't know anything at all, like he was just breathing without a cause. 

Just existing. 

The observatory was a dome within a dome, the second dome so much larger and so much brighter. The night sky. It was trying to outshine the lights of San Fransokyo. It was so alive today, stories etched into the realms above, waiting for someone to gaze between the lines. 

Hiro tugged his sweater a little closer, shaking away the rain and the cold and the city lights. He had walked. He hated walking. He always needed to zoom, to break through the sound barrier, to feel the rush of adrenaline in his ears. Walking was too gentle. 

But he’d walked all the way up here, onto this hill at the edge of the cityscape. It felt like Hiro was higher up than the skyscrapers, the stars so much easier to reach from this platform. From all the way up here, The Golden Gate Bridge looked like a shiny toy that someone had decided to plop onto a puddle. 

Hiro turned back towards the observatory. It was dark, darker than the shadows cast by the pattern of trees bunched around it. They were trying to hide it from plain sight. They were trying to keep it a secret. Her secret. 

Hiro’s breathing was labored. Even up here where the air was fresher, it still felt like his lungs were turning it into tar. His lungs were bad things, two factories polluting him from the inside out, polluting everything around him, too. 

His lungs were bad things. 

He was mere inches away from the entrance. 

_Fuck._

What was he doing? He wasn’t ready for this. But when would he be? When he was senile and shriveled? When he was so sure he’d leave and have no more time to come up here and see all the things she once called her own?

He swallowed, but questions weren't something you could simply swallow away. He clasped the bundle of keys tighter against his chest. He could feel the tiny plush cat squeezed between his fingers. He'd given her the key chain as a birthday present. Eleven years ago. He'd felt horrible. Other kids gave their mom's nicer things on their birthdays. 

_Now_  was horrible, but  _now_  was the only time he could do it. He was sober enough. He was okay enough. This was the best he could do. 

 

 

 

It felt like he was stepping into a gigantic burrow, some place safe and sound and silent. The air inside of the dome was cool, a little dry like it hadn’t been used enough. Hiro’s steps echoed through the metal hemisphere. The sounds were a companion. He didn’t feel so alone. 

The telescope was smaller than he remembered. But the last time he’d been here, he’d been minuscule, barely tall enough to look over table tops. 

He could still hear her voice. It was the kind of tone she’d used to explain those difficult adult things, like why the sky was blue, or why everybody looked different - or why sometimes fathers didn’t come home before bedtime. 

 

_"And this is the telescope. It’s really important, Hiro. You can see space through it. Everything. Stars. Planets. Bits of our Milky Way galaxy," she said, looking down at him. Her eyes were big and round. They were two planets. Two brown planets. She smiled. Hiro giggled. He liked space. He wanted to fly to space, to touch it, to feel it. He wanted to hold the stars and hug them, just like she hugged him, all safe and warm and nice._

_"It’s what I do. I explore it all from down here. I look through it, and I see the universe."_

_"Can I see?"_

_"Not right now, bud. I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to open the dome."_

_Hiro frowned. Telescopes were stupid. Domes were stupid._

_She bent down. She was right in front of him. She brushed the hair out of his eyes. It tickled._

_"Hey, buddy," she whispered like she was about to tell him a secret. Hiro liked secrets. "We’re going to come back here when the dome is open, and you’ll get to see the universe, too."_

_Hiro popped his eyes. He grinned. Big. As big as he could._

_"Really?"_

_"Really really."_

 

She'd never gotten the chance to show him anything. 

Hiro's eyeballs started to tingle. He whipped his head to the side, as if to throw those thoughts and memories out of his brain. But they stayed. They always stayed, stuck between the creases, inside of the hollows, scratching at the inside of his head. They wanted his attention. Hiro tried his best to not give in. 

 

_They were lying on the ground. It was cold. The dome had them caged in, metal strips growing out towards the ground from a tiny dot at the top. Hiro felt like a cupcake beneath those round glass lids that were in Timothy's Pastry Shop. But this lid was metal. This lid was thicker._

_She was holding his hand. She squeezed his fingers. Hiro squeezed back. He couldn't wait to come here again, to see the dome open and touch all the things up there. The universe._

_She turned her head. Hiro turned his head. They were looking at each other. She was so close he could see the bright dots in her eyes. They looked like stars, a gazillion stars trapped inside of her head. Her cheeks were sucked in. She looked like a fish. She was pale, too, almost white. Hiro didn't think people were supposed to be so drained, like all color had been wiped from their bodies. It made the dark marks on her face look more there. She looked like a giraffe. A sad giraffe. Hiro wanted her to get better soon. He didn't like her like this. She always looked sad. She always looked at him sad. Sad things made his chest shake._

_She flicked his nose. Hiro giggled._

_"I love you, bud," she whispered. Hiro stopped giggling. He smiled with his mouth closed._

_"More than all the things up there," she said, pointing a finger at the dome above their heads._

_"All of them?" Hiro's eyes went wide._

_"All of them." She squeezed his fingers._

_ "Me too," Hiro said. She kissed his forehead. Her lips were dry and a little scratchy . _

 

Hiro stood still beneath the part of the telescope that was angled the highest, towards the sky and every realm beyond. He looked at the ground. He swore he could see the outlines of their bodies etched into the floor. He could still see her hair spread across it like thick spiderwebs. 

Hiro plopped onto the floor, and he let his spine curl downwards. He looked up at the closed dome. It was far too dark to see the metal strips. It looked like a patch of nothing high above his head. He didn't want to turn on the lights. He didn't want to see. 

There was nothing but a shard of light seeping through the crack in the open entrance, city lights trying to fight their way into the darkened hemisphere. But they couldn't reach all the way in. 

Hiro took a deep breath. The air was dust and time and barely existent memories. He closed his eyes so hard he could see static. 

 

_"I want you to promise me something, Hiro."_

_She leaned in closer. A stray curl tickled his face. Hiro stopped smiling. She looked so serious. He didn't like her face like that. It was the same kind of feeling he got when she looked sad. Sad and Serious. He didn't like those things. Just like he didn't like brussels sprouts and baths and dads._

_"Whatever happens...I need you to promise me -" She took his face into her hands, holding him, squishing his cheeks. He turned his head, but she held him tight. It almost hurt. "Look at me, Hiro." She took a breath. Hiro stopped breathing._

_"Promise me that you won't let anything stop you. Don't let anything stand in your way. You -_ you  _are amazing. You need to keep going. You need to keep going up." There was a careful smile on her scratchy lips. "Up, up and away," she whispered, the way she always did. Soft and quiet like she was trying to put him to sleep._

_"Promise me that, Hiro. Okay? Promise me that."_

_Hiro nodded. He still couldn't breathe._

_"Hiro. Promise me that." It almost sounded angry._

_"Promise," Hiro said. It wasn't loud enough for anyone to hear._

_She nodded. She smiled, but she still looked sad and serious._

 

Hiro dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. He had made a promise, he didn't know how to keep. He'd been so young and so clueless. He hadn't understood the terms or conditions. He hadn't known that it was going to be this hard. Because how was he supposed to keep going up when his feet couldn't even leave the ground? He was stuck. He was standing at the edge of a cliff with nowhere else to go but down. That's how gravity worked. You could only go down.

_Up, up and away.  _

Hiro slammed his hands into the ground. It felt like the impact made the tectonic plates shift. 

_Up, up and away._

What if she was looking down right now? What if she was angry? What if she was disappointed? 

_Up, up and away.  _

He'd become friends with it. With fear. It was this constant companion, someone that just clung to him like a parasite. And he let it. He let it force him into hiding, into all those dark places, into each and every blind spot. 

And then there was this image in his head, flickering right in front of his eyes like he was staring at the display of a camcorder. 

It was her. 

She was standing in an office full of people. She was in the front, the light-projected image of a LCD projector spread across the wall, her body creating a shadow in the back. The digital pictures of constellations aligned with the freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge. Her mouth was spread wide. She was smiling while talking.  

She was explaining her theories, things Hiro hadn't been able to understand those many years ago. Complex things. Adult things. And he hadn't concentrated on all the words that had sounded like gibberish to him. He'd just watched her. She'd been this bright and beautiful thing, amazed by the ideas she'd tried to explain. She'd stumbled over words, hands bashing around like she was trying to force herself into all of their heads. She'd looked so determined to share  _everything_ . She'd showed them the universe through her eyes, her big, brown planet eyes. And she'd reached for the top with all her might, not caring if it was too high up for her to reach. Because that had always been temporary. She'd always found a way to reach further. And no matter how many people thought she was crazy or insane, she kept going. She kept reaching. She hadn't been afraid of making a fool of herself. She hadn't cared about anything else. It had all been for her. For no one else but her. 

Hiro didn't know how to do things for himself. He couldn't even see his own reflection when he looked into mirrors. It was like he'd gotten so preoccupied with trying to hide from plain sight that he'd started slipping away from himself as well. He didn't know where he was. He didn't even know if he wanted to know. 

He was invisible. 

She hadn't been invisible. Tadashi wasn't invisible. Hiro didn't know why he was thinking about Tadashi. He kept seeing him on that stage, breathing in the limelight like that was all he'd ever need. There was this thing that they shared. Tadashi and Kira. 

They'd both stood in front of the world, in full view, arms wide open. 

Hiro couldn't see himself in front of the world. The world was too big, too heavy. Earth was the largest terrestrial planet of the inner solar system. It was bigger than Mercury and Venus and Mars. What was Hiro in the face of 6.6 sextillion tons? He was miniscule. He was barely even there. 

Hiro slapped his hands onto his face and smothered himself with his own skin. All he could smell was sweat and smoke. 

He was making the same mistake. It was happening all over again. He was a fucking coward. 

He should've been there for her back then. 

_ Coward. _

He should've fought to stand between her and the world. 

_ Coward. _

And that's all he'd wanted. That's all he'd yearned for - to be tough enough to take on the chaos before it could reach her. 

_ Coward.   
_

He should've seen her. 

_Coward._  

He should've saved her. 

 

✦

Hiro pounded his fists against the door, so hard the 'Sorry, We're Closed' sign started to clatter against the glass. The lights went on. Hiro clamped his bottom lip between his teeth. It hurt. But he couldn’t feel it. Everything was numbed. It was far too cold for pain. 

A figure tumbled towards the door, broad shoulders, slender legs - big hands. 

Tadashi stopped right behind the glass. He narrowed his eyes. His hair looked insane.  

"Hiro?" he mouthed, his words squeezing themselves through the cracks in the door. 

"I’m doing it." Hiro said. He waited. This was the part where the door should open. Tadashi narrowed his eyes a little more. He didn’t move. He just stared and breathed, and Hiro had enough time to ask himself why the hell he was here in the first place. The last time he’d checked the display of his phone it had been midnight. Hiro had no idea how late it was - or how early. His head was too scrambled for him to give a crap. 

"I’m doing it," Hiro repeated, voice a little louder than before. Tadashi fumbled for the door knob. It opened. The warmth of the cafe hit him like a freight train. Hiro was starting to melt. Tadashi rubbed his face until it was all flushed. Hiro watched the red splurges melt into his cheeks until his skin was back to being that nice shade of pale. His skin reminded him of pastry cream. 

"What?" Tadashi said, letting his hands fall to his sides. "What are you doing here?" He stepped to the side, gesturing for Hiro to come in. Hiro stayed put. 

"I’m doing it. The - thing. The next convention."

Tadashi’s eyebrows shot up. And that was it. 

Hiro didn’t know what he had expected. Fireworks? A mariachi band? A fucking "Good for you, now, can I go back to whatever the hell I was doing, before you decided to barge in at what-the-fuck-o’clock in the morning"?

But Tadashi was silent. He just kept staring until Hiro’s ears started to burn. And then he laughed. Tadashi laughed, and the lights of the cafe started glowing a little brighter, and Hiro’s ears let their fire bite his skull. Tadashi laughed, and it was so much better than a mariachi band. 

"And you couldn’t wait until tomorrow to tell me?" he asked. He was still laughing. Hiro stared at his feet.

"I - I just -"

"Hey, Hiro." 

Hiro looked up. Tadashi’s eyes were flashlights. 

"I’m glad you decided to tell me at three in the morning." 

Hiro slumped forward. 

"It’s three?"

Tadashi bubbled out another laugh. "It’s three." He nodded, stifling a yawn. 

"Sorry. I - Why are you here at three?"

"Studying."

"At three?"

"Hey, you’re here, too, so..."

"Right. Okay," Hiro breathed. He clamped his bottom lip between his teeth. "Okay. I just wanted to get - the flyer. But I can also get it in the morning. I just - wanted to -"

_Tell you. I just wanted to tell you._

Hiro turned around, eyes burning, head droning. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

"Come on in, Hiro. It’s three. Just come in."

_It’s three._

That was a stupid reason. 

"No, it’s okay. I -"

"Hiro. Come in."

_It’s three.  _

Maybe that reason wasn't stupid enough for Hiro to leave.

Tadashi pressed his shoulder against the door, and it opened a little wider. It was like his smile followed suit, the corners stretching with each creak of the hinges. 

"I want to hear it all. Your ideas. Everything. Come in."

Tadashi looked kind of nice with the light seeping over his profile. And he didn’t seem so far away like this. No limelights. No crowd. His hair was a disarray. He was wearing pajamas. At least Hiro thought those were pajamas. He didn’t think someone like Tadashi would walk around in giant T-Shirts and plaid cotton pants. He was barefoot. And all bare and plain, he looked like he was part of a Coming-of-Age movie.

The kid who would break your heart straight through the television screen.

"Hiro." Tadashi cocked an eyebrow. "Come in."

Tadashi was all the way up there. Hiro was all the way down here. He was looking up at Tadashi. Tadashi was looking down. 

"Come in."

Hiro planted his feet onto the first step. Tadashi stepped out onto the cold concrete. 

They met halfway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Hidashi dumpster's lookin' damn fine today! Let's just all pretend like tweak shops are actually a thing and I'm not just throwing random robotics words in there because...they sound cool... .-.  
> (also, Hiro wearing goggles while fixing an LED display is so stupid, but Hiro wearing goggles is freaking adorable)  
> So...social anxiety is a thing. Like, I know how Hiro feels in the hall is dramatic, but that's how I used to feel every time I stood in a room full of people. It's absolutely terrifying!  
> Anywhoo! Sorry for all the drama! You are fantastic! Have the most fantastic day ever! :) *starts dancing all shitty*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to my garbage can :3

There were many moments in Hiro’s life where he had no clue as to what he was doing. Those moments had the tendency of filling up 99% of the roller coaster ride he liked to call his day-to-day basis.  

This was the basis. Hiro had no idea what he was doing. 

He’d said he’d do it. For the first time in forever he'd said  _yes_. 

_Yes._  


_Yes_ was an initiative.  _Yes_ was a breath closer to the stars.  _Yes_ was taking a step forward - a step that felt like a million miles. 

Hiro was wearing a shirt. An actual shirt. Not a sweater. An actual shirt. He didn't even know he owned a shirt. He didn't even know if it was his. It had taken him forever to get the buttons into the right holes. His fingers were going berserk. God, he was so good at freaking himself out. He wished his head would just stop thinking, just for a second, just long enough for him to take a breather. He felt like running back to the apartment and scrambling under his sheets. He hadn't even made it to the door. This was pathetic. He kicked his board into the air. The panel wobbled. It felt like he was standing on it for the first time.  

"Hiro! Hey, where are you going?"

Back. He was determined to go back.

"Hey, Hiro! Wait!" 

Hiro clamped his lips between his teeth. He stopped. The board twitched. 

"Hiro!" 

Fuck. 

Hiro flicked his heels back, and the panel dropped. He didn't unbuckle his feet. He looked over his shoulder. Tadashi was standing at the top of the staircase, the door of the cafe jammed against his shoulder. He looked so nice. He always looked so nice. He looked like that feeling you got when you drank a cup of coffee on a windowsill. Cozy. Comfy. Lukewarm. 

"How long we’re you out here?"

"Uh - not long."

_Forever_.

Tadashi rearranged his cap a little higher. He smiled. He looked at Hiro's shirt. He scrunched his eyebrows, but his smile was still there, and it looked a little bigger than before. Hiro’s head was being shoved into a microwave. 

"Come on, coffee machine’s already running." Tadashi turned, hand clasping the edge of the door as he looked over his shoulder. There was something expectant in the way he was smiling. Everything on his head was going up, his eyebrows, his nose, the corners of his mouth, the tips of his ears. It was like someone was pulling his features towards the sky. Like his face was in the process of defying gravity. 

Hiro forgot how to think properly. His brain was melting. He stared at his feet, and it took him a while to reevaluate their purpose. Fucking feet. He took a breath as he bent down and undid the buckles. His hands were vibrating. He still had no idea what he was doing. He hoped she wasn’t watching. This wasn’t something he wanted her to see. This was him stumbling, floundering, toppling. This was him taking  real steps. He felt like a toddler, familiar hands letting him go and pushing him across a crayon stained carpet. Towards a camcorder. Towards a proud, parental smile. Towards another pair of hands. 

Hiro didn't know if he could make it all the way. Fucking feet. 

This already felt like the biggest disaster of all time. 

 

✦

 

"So I took a look at the ideas we worked out the past week, and as I said...I really think those magnetic rocket launchers would knock their socks off."

Hiro didn’t know how he felt about Tadashi saying stuff like 'knock their socks off'. The world would probably break if he ever dropped an F-Bomb. Maybe Tadashi didn’t even know what an F-Bomb was. 

"But I mean, what do you think? This is your project and everything," Tadashi said from the back of the counter. He said it like an afterthought.

_Your project_. 

For the past week, it hadn’t really felt like Hiro's project. It was like Tadashi was trying to do it all for him. It wasn’t really Hiro’s. 

"Yeah, I - I like the rocket launchers," Hiro mumbled, staring down at the hole in the rubber tip of his left sneaker. 

No wonder Tadashi was trying to do it all for him. Hiro just kept nodding. 

Tadashi was trying to help. Hiro had asked him for help. He knew that. But Tadashi wasn’t giving him enough time to just -  _think_. Tadashi had the tendency of moving at lightspeed. Everything had to happen in an instant. It was like he was afraid he’d miss something, like he needed to take initiative or neither of them would reach the finish line in time. Hiro was being dragged along, and he didn't have a chance to hold onto something. He didn't know where to start and find his footing. He had no idea what he was doing. 

"We’d have to start with the issue of the whole magnetic fields." Tadashi kept talking and talking, and Hiro had stopped listening a long time ago. 

Tadashi kept saying stuff like 'we' and 'our', and it was far too close for comfort. Hiro wasn’t used to hearing those words with him in the picture. He felt like a kid in a sandbox, trying to grasp the idea of sharing his shovel and building a sandcastle with a total stranger. Sort-of-a-stranger. Hiro didn’t really know what this was. But he didn’t know if he was ready to actually become a 'we' or an 'our' with this person. Because it sounded so nice. Too nice.

_We. Our. You and me_. 

Hiro felt like throwing up. 

"Okay. Stop."

Tadashi stopped. His head whipped around. "What?" He looked like someone had slapped him in the face.

Hiro took a deep breath. He was glad he hadn't decided to wear that shirt again. He hadn't been able to breathe in it. Which was funny, because he couldn't breathe now either, even with his giant sweater on, even with all the space in the world.

"This -" Hiro started. He stopped. He swallowed. "It’s too fast. This is too fast. I don’t really know how to - I mean, this is just -"  Hiro tried to put the words into the right order. How was he supposed squeeze 'I’m too stupid to keep up' into a coherent English sentence?

"Oh. Sorry." Tadashi looked down at the empty mug in his hands. "I...sorry. I get a little carried away. It’s just when I - when I really get into something it’s hard for me to slow down." 

Hiro’s head was back to being shoved into a microwave. Tadashi was really into this. Into robotics and scientific ideas. Not anything else. Not Hiro. Definitely not Hiro. Of course not. Jesus Christ.  

"Sorry," Tadashi said again, and the way he was looking down at the floor made him look like a puppy that had been caught trashing homework. He kicked his head up. "Slowing down," he said with a smile. It was tiny, barely crooked, but it still managed to flick the microwave around Hiro’s head into overdrive. It stayed quiet. Hiro had never missed The Beatles this much. It felt like they were both bawling with the things in their heads, realizing that the other person was probably doing the exact same thing. They were thinking about each other, about the things in their heads. It was a weird feeling. Hiro didn't know what to do with his hands. 

"Here." Tadashi handed him a mug. "Careful. It’s - hot." Hiro had no idea how so many words could sound like apologies without being apologies. 

"Thanks," Hiro said as he pulled the mug against his chest, letting the warmth feed the fire beneath his sternum. He watched Tadashi sink into the seat across from him. The morning light was spilling through the window, leaking across his face like a tipped over bucket of warmth. If Sunday mornings were a person, it would be Tadashi Matsuno. 

"Okay. So...I'm sorry," Tadashi said. Again. Hiro watched his Adam's Apple bob. He wanted to touch it. "This is all you. I'll - I'll be here to help, okay? I'll - Where would you like to start?" Tadashi's eyes kept flicking over Hiro’s features like he was looking for something. Hiro bit his bottom lip. Tadashi swallowed. His eyes snapped up from where they’d been latched to the bottom of Hiro’s face. 

He still felt like vomiting. 

"I don’t know. Maybe...nanotech?" Pause. Hiro didn't know how to make the rest of it sound right. "Something...that reacts to impulses. A tool." Another pause. "For astronauts."

"A tool for astronauts." Tadashi repeated it like it was completely normal. He didn't shrug his shoulders or twitch with his eyebrows. He just stared. Because, yeah -  _astronauts_. 

"Multi functioning," Hiro added. "NASA." He didn't know how to speak anymore. 

Tadashi shifted, and the chair squeaked, and he was leaning his head to the side, and Hiro couldn't breathe. 

"NASA is one of the sponsors," Hiro said. And he wanted to say so much more. He wanted to give Tadashi an explanation, something that made sense, something that sounded coherent. But he didn't have a real explanation. All he had was this memory of his mom taking him to her seminars and letting him sit in the front row. All he had was her voice saying, 'Welcome, everybody. My name's Kira Hamada, and today, we're all going to shoot for the stars'. All he had were those four big letters lighting up the wall behind her like an electric halo. 

NASA. 

That's all Hiro had. That's all Hiro needed. 

Tadashi kicked his head back into an upright position. He nodded. Slowly. 

"Alright. Cool. That’s a really good start." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Cool," he breathed, eyes strained against the coffee mug Hiro had pressed against his chest. His eyes were all big again, and Hiro wondered if he could see straight through the coffee mug, past his skin and into his ribcage. He wondered if he could see what his heart was doing, because it sounded like it was doing strange things, like it was planning to escape him. Outbreak. Liberation. Those were strange things for an organ to do. 

"Thanks," Hiro said. Tadashi’s eyes let go of the coffee mug. He was looking at him. 

It was two weeks from December, but it was always going to be October in those eyes. Cracked timber. Auburn landscapes. Warm burrows. Southward flying birds. 

"For what?" Tadashi asked. It was almost a whisper.

"For this. For helping. I mean, you don’t even know me, so...like...thanks."

Hiro lifted the mug to his mouth, gulping down as much as he could. Maybe second degree burns would keep him from saying stupid stuff.

"You’re welcome." Tadashi smiled, and his eyes smiled, too. "Hiro."

 

 

 

"Oh hey, Hiro!" 

Big exclamation mark. Hiro lifted his head from where it had been leaning against his knuckles. He'd been staring down at the hoard of sketches he'd scribbled onto napkins and ripped notebook pages. Everything looked terrible. 

Cass wobbled around the counter, a hand pressed against her torso, baby belly pushed outward like she actually couldn't stand straight. It was bigger than the last time Hiro had seen it. The ominous  _her_. The human growing inside of Cass' stomach. 

"Whoa. What's all this?" She pointed at the disaster sprawled across the coffee table and crumpled over the floor.

"It's Sunday. It's the world's day off, and you're - "

"Innovating," Tadashi cut her off. He was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, forehead leaning against the edge of the table. He looked like someone had sucked the energy right out of his brain. Hiro probably looked the same. Probably worse. Way worse. 

"Innovating. Uhu," Cass mumbled as she leaned over the dump of sketches. She didn't really look surprised about Hiro being here - on a Sunday, with her nephew. His cheeks started to get all tingly. Maybe Tadashi had told her. Maybe Tadashi actually talked about Hiro. That was terrifying. Being talked about made you more existent, like you were living somewhere outside of the walls you were stuck in, like being an extra in the background of a picture on someone else's phone. Hiro wondered on how many stranger's pictures he was. That thought terrified him a little more. 

"Well, innovators gotta eat, right?" Cass looked up, grinning like a kid on Christmas. She pressed her fingers into Tadashi's scalp. "Leo made vegan empanadas."

"Ew." Tadashi lifted his head from the table, face scrunched. Cass bubbled out a laugh. It sounded so familiar. 

"No worries, bud. I made hot wings. Got your back," she said, drumming her fingers across the top of Tadashi's head. He smiled. She smiled. Blindingly. Hiro felt the need to shield his eyes. 

"Leo can eat his vegan empa-what-nots all by himself. Except...if you like vegan." Cass looked over at Hiro. Hiro didn't know if she was talking to him. He wished he'd payed more attention. Cass lifted her eyebrows so high her hairline was about to swallow them whole.

"Hiro?" Her hairline swallowed her eyebrows whole. Hiro couldn't stop staring. 

"Do...you like vegan?" 

Tadashi was looking at him now, too. Hiro didn't know what to do. Normal people would've answered. But normal people probably didn't question the laws of the universe when asked if they wanted to stay for dinner. Hiro had never been asked to stay for dinner. Then again, that hadn't really been the question. Cass had just asked him if he liked vegan.

Did Hiro like vegan? Hiro had no clue if he liked vegan. He'd never had vegan. And the fact that someone was asking him made him want to find out. 

"Because I can go tell Leo to make more," Cass said, and she flung a hand into the air like she was trying to swat a fly. 

That was technically an invitation - an unclear invitation but an invitation. Technically.

Hiro nodded. 

He had been invited to stay for dinner. He had been invited to eat vegan empa-what-nots. He felt like J.F.K. and new frontiers. He felt like Neil Armstrong stabbing The American flag into the moon. 

 

 

 

"Hey, champ." Leo sounded like a bear grumbling through a megaphone. Tadashi looked a little constipated as he made his way to the fridge. Hiro probably wouldn't like to be called champ either. It sounded like something suburban dads would say, business men that wore expensive suits and only ever managed to appear at dinner when their work wasn't in the way. Leo probably thought it was a cool thing to say. It didn't fit. Hiro was still waiting for him to say 'dude'. 

"Hey, Hiro." Leo turned around, wiping his forehead with the dishtowel he had flung over his shoulder. He was wearing a bandana. It was almost as blue as his eyes. Almost. 

"So you ready for some rad vegan?" Leo asked, squinting with his eyes. It was probably supposed to be a wink, but it just looked like he was blinking without his eyelids being able to synchronize.

Tadashi took an energy drink. He closed the fridge. He turned around. He didn't move. He stared at Leo like he was a pod-person. 

Leo had just said 'rad'. 

"He's willing to  _try_." Cass squeezed herself into what little space was left between the kitchen island and the stove. The entire kitchen was just a hole in the wall. Hiro had no idea how they all managed to fit. Tadashi was sitting on the counter, downing the energy drink like he needed to gear up for a marathon. Cass was trying to fight her way to the sink, swatting at everything in her way. Leo was pressed against the oven, whistling to the tunes crackling out of the tiny red radio on the upper left cupboard. 

It was all so domestic Hiro felt like he was in a 90's family sitcom. 

"Sit, Hiro. Don't be a stranger." Cass pointed at the table squashed against the kitchen island. It was tiny. Miniscule. The chairs were all different. There were four. Hiro chose the smallest one. He didn't want to take up too much space. 

_Don't be a stranger_.

"Hey, pregnant love of my life. Go sit."

"Really? You're strapping me to chairs like I'm disabled. I'm just pregnant."

"Just pregnant...I'm serious. Sit." Leo was the one to swat Cass with a spatula this time. Tadashi still looked constipated. This felt like a day-to-day basis kind of thing. 

Hiro looked down at the fingers he'd woven into his sweater. This felt like a good day-to-day basis, filled with spatula-swatting and sticky affection and smiles, lots and lots of spectrum-smiles. Hiro's day-to-day basis was hangovers and aspirin and needing every ounce of energy to roll out of bed and into reality.

 

 

 

Vegan empa-what-nots weren't even that bad. But Hiro couldn't finish what was on his plate, no matter how many times Cass asked if he'd like more. Hiro just didn't know how to keep food in his stomach long enough. Another part of his day-to-day basis. 

The rest of the table was practically inhaling their food. It made Hiro stab his fork a little more into the mush on his plate. Like he was trying to inflict pain. But it was hard keeping up with trying to hurt his food while watching these people. They weren't the kind of family you saw on stock photos or in TV commercials. They were real. They were a jumble of mismatched parts, a patchwork of things that weren't supposed to work - but just did. They made it work. And they made it look so easy. They were exactly the way Hiro had imagined them to be like. They were the exact family that would fit into a place like this. Goofy and loud and chaotic in all the good ways. And they were nice. They were so nice to each other it made Hiro want to vomit the vegan right back onto his plate. Or maybe he'd just been numbed to all things affectionate that he just didn't know where to put all the confusion - except right back through his throat and onto his plate. 

This was what a real family was supposed to look like. 

Nobody was missing. Nobody was staring at a vacant chair. Nobody was trying to hold back tears and screams and fists. Nobody was trying to shove the food down because shoving food down gave you an excuse to stay silent. 

This was what a real family was supposed to look like. 

Hiro kept stabbing his food in silence, watching the happenings at the table like a bystander staring at a larger than life television screen. He didn't remember the last time he'd sat at a table and eaten. He didn't even have a table in his apartment. Tables were always too big for him. He'd sit a table, and it would always feel empty, like he wasn't even sitting there, like he wasn't even part of the constellation. 

Hiro avoided tables. But this table made him want to change his mind. This was what sitting at tables was supposed to feel like. Used. Occupied. You were obligated to stay, and you wanted to. 

Tadashi was sitting right across from him, and the table was so small they were almost bumping knees. They were  _all_ almost bumping knees. Hiro was glad he was just as minuscule as the table. 

Leo and Cass were bantering like little kids, interrupting their war of words with snorts and stuffing food into their mouthes before continuing with newfound fervor. Tadashi had the side of his head perched onto his knuckles. He was leaning to the side, this tired smile tugging at his lips. His eyes were like pingpong balls, flicking from Cass to Leo to his plate and back. And in steady intervals, he would disrupt the pattern and look straight at Hiro. It was a little apologetic, and a little nice, and a little something else, something he couldn't understand. Hiro tried to smile back. But his muscles were tensing and flexing, and his whole entire face felt uncomfortable like he was out of practice. Hiro dropped each smile before it could even be considered a smile. 

He was going to try and unfurl them in his toilet. In front of the mirror. Alone. Where there were no witnesses. Where there was no Tadashi. When Hiro smiled at Tadashi, he wanted it to look nice. 

 

 ✦

 

Tadashi's room was exactly the way he'd expected it to be. It was at the top of the house, the attic, or something close to it. Usually, attics weren't this clean. When Hiro thought about attics, he thought about dust and time stuffed into stacks of cardboard boxes, cobwebs and broken lightbulbs dangling from sloped ceilings. But Tadashi's room wasn't the way normal attics looked like. It was small and spacious at the same time, probably because everything seemed to have its place. It was organized, structured - clean. Super clean. It didn't really look lived-in. In a way, it reminded Hiro of those bedroom displays at IKEA. But it smelled like it was lived-in, like somebody slept in that bed, and hunched over that tidy desk, and sat at that window nook, and read the books stacked into the shelf that took over a whole entire wall. And it didn't feel cold or distant. It didn't make Hiro feel like he wasn't allowed to breathe on anything for too long. It didn't make him feel like he had to keep his hands and feet as close to his body at all times. It didn't make him feel as uncomfortable as he wanted it to make him feel. Maybe because it was so small, or maybe it was the window nook, or the lived-in smell. Hiro couldn't decide, and he didn't want to. 

"And this is my room." Tadashi spread his arms out, letting them fall against his sides as fast as he'd raised them. 

"It's..."  _Clean. Tidy. Neat. Super, super clean. I want to dig my face into your bed._ "Nice," Hiro said. 

Tadashi nodded. He plopped onto the side of the bed. There was enough space next to him. Hiro would fit. It looked like he'd fit. 

"The house looks bigger from the outside."

"I think it's just right," Hiro said. Tadashi smiled, and the room shrunk a million fractions. It felt like the walls were caging them in, pressing them against each other. Chest to chest. Hiro wondered what their heartbeats would sound like. Like drums. Bongo drums. 

"Yeah. I think so, too. Don't want to leave this place. It's a little pathetic, right? I mean, I'm 21, and I'd rather live at my aunt's house than anywhere else." Tadashi looked down at his sneakers, and he tapped the heels against each other like Dorothy from  _ The Wizard of Oz_. 

"Who cares...If my aunt had a place like this...I'd stay, too," Hiro said, watching Tadashi's Dorothy feet. 

"What's your aunt like?" 

"I don't have one. I just - I meant, if I had an aunt - then I'd - I mean, like your aunt, like Cass. I'd - you know - want to stay. Too." 

Hiro clamped his lips between his teeth like that could keep him quiet. 

"Oh. I'm sorry." Tadashi stopped tapping with his feet. 

"You don't have to apologize for me not having an aunt."

"Still. Sorry."

Someone had to tell Tadashi to stop apologizing so much. It made him look smaller. 

The room went quiet, the only sounds coming from the organs in their chests and the lamp on the desk. The lightbulb was buzzing. 

"Your family is really nice," Hiro said. He didn't know what else to say. Tadashi looked up. His head went crooked, and he was staring at him all - crookedly. He huffed out a laugh, and it sounded exhausted. 

"Yeah. They - " Tadashi rubbed the back of his neck. "They can be a handful. But, yeah - I mean, yeah - they are really nice." 

And then Tadashi's face went all soft, and his mouth pulled itself into a tiny little quirk, and there was something fond about the way he was looking at a spot behind Hiro's left shoulder. Hiro couldn't bring himself to turn around. He was afraid of missing something on Tadashi's face, like maybe it could get even better, and Hiro wouldn't be able to witness it. He wanted to witness Tadashi's face 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

_ What? _

He had no idea when he'd started thinking about Tadashi the way he thought about 90's Rom-Coms and kindergarten crushes. 

"It's weird realizing that the family's going to get -  _bigger_ ," Tadashi said. He was back to tapping his heels against each other. It took Hiro a while to understand what he was talking about. 

"Do you have a name yet? Or do they? Or..."

"We're still debating." Tadashi lifted an eyebrow. "You can sit if you want." 

Hiro didn't know if he meant sitting on the bed or the chair at the desk. Of course he didn't mean the bed. Hiro couldn't handle thinking about him being on a bed with Tadashi. He couldn't really handle thinking about him being in Tadashi's room with Tadashi. 

Hiro sat on the chair, careful, like he was afraid of breaking it or dirtying the leather with his unwashed jeans. 

"Leo wants to call her  Olive." 

"Olive's not that bad." Because it wasn't. It was just a little weird. 

"It's  _Olive_." Tadashi's head went all crooked again. "It's eatable. I don't want her to have an eatable name. Olive is just so - such a Leo thing. He's bizarre."

Hiro scratched his eyebrow, lifting his arm high enough to hide the smile that was tugging at his mouth. "How did Cass even -"

"End up with a guy that looks like he was born in the middle of the ocean and sells pot in a rainbow minivan?" Tadashi cut him off. 

Hiro couldn't hold back a laugh. It sounded like a bark. He didn't have a nice laugh. Tadashi's smile widened. Who knew he could be kind of funny? 

"Yeah," Hiro said, sucking the bark-laugh into the pits of his stomach. "He probably actually owns a rainbow minivan, right?"

"He used to. Apparently. He has polaroid pictures of it all over the fridge. I think he called it Mindy - or something. He travelled a lot."

Hiro didn't know Leo, but that sounded like Leo. 

"So...how did they end up - together?" Hiro asked. He didn't care if it was a stupid question. He wanted to keep the ball rolling, wanted to steady this rhythm of questions and answers and smiles. He liked this. This was nice. Hiro could pretend like they were closer here. More honesty. Less walls. And maybe for a second, he could get away with pretending like this was real. Like they were real. 

_We. Our. You and me._  

Tadashi slumped onto the comforter, intertwining his fingers on his stomach. He stared at the ceiling.

"They knew each other since high school. Cass told me that he left right after graduation. He asked her if she'd come with him - but she didn't. He sent her postcards from everywhere...for like ten years. "

_Ten years_. 

Hiro wondered how many letters could be written in ten years. He wondered what it would feel like to have someone think about you a million miles away, surrounded by a million other people for ten years. Ten years was a long time. 

Tadashi took a deep breath. His chest puffed up. He had a big chest.  

"Anyways, six - no, seven...seven years ago there's this guy at our doorstep with a rainbow minivan, saying that he's here to see the love of his life." He chuckled. It was breathy and small and kind of adorable. "And that was it. Now, I'm - going to be a big brother." 

Hiro held his breath. He waited for Tadashi to correct that last word. He didn't know if he'd said it by accident. But Tadashi was staring at the ceiling with his eyes half-closed, and he was smiling, and he didn't look like he was thinking about what he'd said. 

How long had Tadashi lived with Cass?

"The big brother of Olive," Hiro said, and it felt like he was talking to himself. He was trying to help himself understand. "Tadashi and Olive." 

He turned his chair a little and rested his chin onto the top of the backrest. Tadashi turned his head towards Hiro. His eyes were smiling. His mouth wasn't. 

"You know...when you say it, I think I almost like it. Tadashi and Olive." He rolled it over his tongue. He laughed. "It sounds weird."

"Not that weird. Olive and Tadashi. Tadashi and Olive." Hiro repeated the names, listening to what pairing sounded better. They both sounded nice - weird - but really nice. 

"Tadashi and Olive," Tadashi said. "Yeah, okay. I guess you're right." 

Tadashi stopped laughing. Hiro stopped breathing. 

Tadashi was just looking at him, and it felt like he was back to cracking his skull open and climbing right in. Tadashi was hiding inside of Hiro's head. He wondered where. He wished he could clean that space for him, make it look just as clean as his super clean room. But Hiro knew everything inside of his head would never be neat and tidy. There was just too much in it for him to keep it clean, too loud for him to keep it calm. 

Tadashi twitched, and he turned his head back the right way round. His eyes were stapled to the ceiling. It was quiet again. But it wasn't a silent kind of quiet. It was a loud kind of quiet, a quiet you could hear blaring in your ears.

"Sometimes..." Tadashi said. He shifted. The bed creaked. "Sometimes, I'm afraid of being horrible. Sometimes, I have these dreams, where I'm - where something bad happens to her, and I can't reach her in time."

Tadashi and horrible. Those two things didn't fit. But Tadashi looked like he actually thought they did. There was this fracture in his face that made him look different. And he seemed the type to always be afraid of letting others down, of not getting it right the first time. Tadashi reminded him of those kids in gym class that were the captains of the loosing dodgeball team. And they'd feel like their team losing had been their fault and their fault alone. Because they were team captains. Because they were in charge. Because they thought they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. It was just dodgeball. 

Except it wasn't.

"I think...the fact that you're afraid of being horrible proves that you won't...be horrible. You're going to be alright. She's going to be alright," Hiro said, and he wasn't thinking about trying to say the right thing or wether his words had been enough. He didn't dare close his eyes. He was trying to memorize Tadashi's profile. Tadashi looked different without the limelight or the sun leaking through windowpanes. 

More shadows. More contrasts. More dimensions. More real.  

"I hope so," Tadashi said. It was so quiet Hiro had to read his lips. And then Tadashi turned his head again, and he was looking at him, and it felt like something cracked inside of his ribs.  This was Tadashi's face with the lights down low. This was the kind of face you needed when the world was too loud, when you needed to put it all to sleep. This was the kind of face that slowed time, softened it, rubbed it down to its core. Warm hollows, melting curves. Shadows. 

This was Tadashi's face in the dark. Hiro's head went quiet. 

 

 ✦

 

Hiro tried to tone it down, but his whole entire body was warm like a bonfire. It didn't help to curl up further into his sweaters. They were big. His sweaters were all a million sizes too big. But they were half a size too small to hide the fact that he was burning. 

He was caught in an afterglow that held onto him longer with each time he left the cafe. He could feel it sticking to his skin hours later. Lukewarmth. 

And he knew the second he went to sleep, he'd wake up, and everything would be exactly the way it used to be. The warmth frozen over. And every time he'd wake up, it would be like hitting some sort of bottom, some sort of all-time-low that turned his skin blue. That was reality. It was like those morning afters where he regretted all the things he'd done and all the things he'd said, and he'd hide beneath his covers praying for the earth to turn the other way around. 

He'd have their conversations playing in his brain on a loop, and he'd highlight all the stupid things he'd said, and he'd stumble over those horrible parts like a broken record. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

"You look like you're about to vomit." 

Chess was sprawled across his worktable. He looked dead. Not  _dead_ -dead. Just really close to it. 

"Shut up," Hiro said as he slammed his backpack onto the table. His face felt taut. He was trying to make it stop doing whatever the hell it was doing. 

This morning's sketches fell out of the ripped up front pocket. Today had been good. Today was the kind of day that made it feel like he was actually going somewhere. Everything in his head had been flowing, working to carry him forward. Hiro didn't even know he was capable of doing that - of being so limitless. And all he'd done was sit in a flaking armchair over a cup of coffee with The Beatles in the background. With Tadashi in the background. It was easier working when he wasn't right in front of him, cutting off his words and doing half of it all by himself. It was easier when he wasn't close enough to make Hiro's head go quiet. Today, Tadashi had just been there, and there had been enough space to just  think, the good kind of thinking, not the mess that Hiro was used to. Tadashi had just been there, and that's all Hiro had needed. Tadashi had just been there, and Hiro's brain had turned into an ocean. He'd swum like there'd been no tomorrow. 

"Stop breathing so loud," Chess mumbled into his pillow. He'd been bringing his pillow to work lately. He carried it around like it was part of him, like he couldn't go a second without letting his head crash into anything horizontally. The pillow was blue. Bright blue. The color was so soft it almost made his hair look kind of nice. 

Hiro tried to burn Chess' hair with his eyes. Chess' hair wasn't supposed to look kind of nice. It was poison ivy. 

"Stop staring. It hurts," Chess said. It was gibberish. 

"Good," Hiro said. 

Chess snarled. Even his snarl sounded like something wrung dry. 

"Not my fault you enjoy taking Vanessa's crap." Hiro stuffed the load of paper back into his backpack, shaking off the residue of nice smiles and the smell of freshly ground coffee. It was almost embarrassing how long he'd let it stick to him.  

"Fuck you."

"What? It's true. You let her push you around." Hiro was waiting for Chess to fling something at him, to maybe sneer or laugh like a hyaena. But Chess was just lying there. He still looked dead. Hiro felt like poking him with a stick. He needed something. He was expecting something to just happen. Routine. Day-to-day basis. 

"And now you're sitting here...looking like someone shit you out." 

Desperate attempt. 

"Stop."

"I mean, everyone knows this is what she does best."

Desperate. 

"Hiro, shut up. Just stop."

Hiro flung a paperclip against his head. It stayed stuck between his toxic tendrils. 

"I mean, look at you, Chess."

" _Stop_ !" Chess shouted. He shouted so loud the walls started to crumble. Everything was in the throes of something vicious for a nanosecond.  

Chess lifted his head. His eyes were deep and puffy and violet. His tiny nose was flushed, lips pale, cheeks even more hollow than usual. Hiro knew what your face did when you couldn't stop crying. Chess dug his knuckles into his eyes. His shoulders twitched. 

This was not their routine. 

This was real. This was serious.

Hiro woke up. He was back. This was reality. Chess was reality. Reality sliced your stomach open and let your organs plop to the floor still attached to your body. There was no time to bask in the leftovers of something wonderful, not when you were cut open. Decaying. 

Hiro didn't know how long he stood at his table, eyes stapled to Chess' head. He hoped he wasn't hurting him with his staring. But then he reminded himself that Chess hadn't given a shit when Hiro had dragged himself to work with bruises on his face and a giant mess in his head. Chess hadn't given a shit when Hiro had been dying under his worktable for weeks. Chess never gave a shit. And now, Chess was leaning over his table crying into his pillow, and Hiro didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say - what to think. An hour ago he'd been in a dream. He'd been asleep in a spectrum. And now he was here, and this was so real, and he didn't want to be in a place that was so fucking real. Hiro didn't know when it had started to hurt this much.  _Real_ had never hurt this much. Neither had waking up. 

_ What the hell is wrong with you?  _

Hiro rubbed his face with both hands. He felt like slapping himself, the way he always did when he woke up with a hangover. 

_ Stop pretending like there's more. This is it.  _

Chess mushed the pillow against both sides of his head like he wanted to stuff it into his ears. There were scratches on his arms, red blobs and bruises. Needle track marks. 

_ This is it.   _

 

✦

 

The thing about drugs was that you were told from the start that they were bad. 

Bad news. Bad habit. Bad outcome. Stay away. 

And yet you tried it anyways, because it felt good doing something bad, because it was exciting. It made you feel like you were actually living, your state of mind giving in to something extraordinary. And you lied to yourself, thinking it was just going to be one time. And that one time turned into another, and another, and another. Until you lost count. 

The thing about drugs was that you always came crawling back. It wasn't just something you could stop. Stopping wasn't an option. 

It was an easy escape. It was like flying into paradise with an action as simple as closing your eyes. 

An old friend. A new dream. 

Hiro was looking up at the cafe. He always came crawling back. 

 

 

 

"Hey, Hiro. How are -" Tadashi stopped. He looked at him. His face fell. Hiro could hear it smack to the ground. Splat. 

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Hiro said. The sweater he was wearing felt so much bigger than when he'd woken up in it. He felt like he was being swallowed. His sweater was digesting him, skin and bone and brain. 

He was looking at Tadashi, and he knew what he needed. He needed a smile or a laugh or just giant flashlight eyes. But Tadashi wasn't giving him anything. He walked right up to Hiro, and he was looking down at him, and he didn't look like he knew what to give him. Hiro wanted to reach up and touch his cheekbones. He had nice cheeks, flushed and a little curvy, like you knew they'd be soft. Everything  _Tadashi_ was soft. Hiro wanted to curl up into his chest and wrap all of him around him like a blanket. 

But he stumbled back. Two steps. Three. He was almost at the door. Tadashi stood still. And all this was so strange, because it felt like they were meeting for the first time. Talking to him had been easier. Looking at him had been easier.  

Hiro was staring at Tadashi's sneakers. Minty. 

"If you don't feel well, then we can skip today. You should get some sleep. You look - "  _Tired. Exhausted. Drained. Sad. Alone. _

But Tadashi didn't say anything else. He went quiet.  All Hiro could hear were The Beatles. 

 

_ Julia, Julia, oceanchild, calls me _

_ Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me _

 

Hiro shook his head. He didn't want to go to the apartment. He didn't want to go back. Into reality. He wanted to stay so badly, but if he told Tadashi that - if he told him how much he needed to fucking stay - he'd probably get scared. He'd look at Hiro with furrowed eyebrows and a tiny mouth, and the woodland in his eyes would go foggy. 

"No, I - can't. Can I stay? Here? Can I just stay? Please? Can I - I stay?" Hiro hated his voice. He sounded like he was begging on his hands and knees. Tadashi opened his mouth. He took a step forward. Two. Then three. He was above him. Towering. 

"Of course you can stay, Hiro." He smiled the smallest smile Hiro had ever seen. It was molecular-level-small. It wasn't even there. 

"Of course," he said again. He was looking at Hiro like he was some stray kitten he'd found on the streets. And as much as Hiro hated being looked at like that, he couldn't help but get all fuzzy inside. Because Tadashi was looking at him like he wanted to take care of him, like he wanted to keep him warm and safe and put him to sleep and feed him like a baby. 

Hiro was so pathetic. But this was a dream, and you were allowed to be pathetic in dreams. What happened in dreams stayed in dreams.

 

 

Tadashi talked carefully and quietly, as if he needed to make sure Hiro was actually listening. He kept his distance, always enough inches between them to keep the warmth in reins. It was like Tadashi was afraid Hiro could break any second, like he was fragile, something that had to be touch with gloved fingers and fleeting looks. Maybe the worst part was that Hiro did feel like he could crumble. All he needed was a blow, and he'd disintegrate. Days like these were the worst. Days like these made him want to run without reaching the end, fall without hitting the bottom, drown without letting enough water in.  

"Are you hungry?" Tadashi was standing in the kitchen. He looked a little too big for it. Not as big as Leo looked like in it. Everything around Leo looked like tiny Barbie doll accessories. But Tadashi was big, and he made the kitchen look small. Hiro wondered what he looked like when he stood next to Tadashi. Barely visible? 

Tadashi lifted an eyebrow. 

_Right. Food. _

Hiro shook his head. 

"You should really eat something. Maybe, something small? An apple?" 

Hiro shook his head again. 

"Coffee?"

Hiro nodded. He looked over at the clock above the fridge. It was a golden cat with a paw stretched into the air, clock-face pressed into its belly. 

8:26 pm. 

His mom used to have the same clock above her bed. Hiro still thought Maneki Nekos had creepy faces. He used to be scared of the clock when he was a kid. She'd always needed to take it down when he'd snuck under her sheets at night. After she let Hiro's father back in, the clock had disappeared forever. Hiro remembered wishing he could have the clock back. His father had been scarier than the clock.

8:27 pm. 

Of all things, he didn't want to sleep. He didn't want to leave this place. Nothing could reach him here. Not even reality. Not even Chess. Not even her. Not even the ruptures in Hiro's head.

8:28 pm.

Hiro ripped his eyes away from the clock. He pulled himself onto the kitchen counter, knowing full well he could've just taken a seat at the table, on a chair, the way normal people did. But the table was too far away from Tadashi. Hiro wanted to be as close as possible. As close as he was allowed to. Tadashi was warm. It was like he tanked sunshine all day and let it radiate through of his skin at night. Hiro wanted him close. He was cold, so cold it felt like his lips were turning blue.

Tadashi was using the coffee machine. It was fascinating. His hands were big, and his fingers were quick. He flicked a button on the display, and Hiro felt like his eyes were glued to his -  _everything_. 

Tadashi was just using a coffee machine. He was just standing there in washed out jeans and a cardigan sweater. He probably hadn't even combed his hair. He was the most mundane thing in the world right now. Except he wasn't. 

Tadashi was just using a coffee machine. And it physically hurt to watch. 

Tadashi was just using a coffee machine. And Hiro was losing his fucking mind. 

His stomach was being turned upside-down. He wanted to vomit his thoughts straight out of his mouth and his nostrils and his ears and maybe even his freaking eyeballs.  He felt like shit. He was sad and angry and freezing. He was so, so tired. 

And all he could think about was Tadashi using a coffee machine. A fucking coffee machine. 

This was the first time his head felt like it was too full to make anything else fit. Maybe because it was shrinking - or maybe because Tadashi was taking up all the space, expanding inside of his skull like a balloon. Hiro wanted to rip him out. He wanted him gone. Tadashi was too big to fit. 

"Here ." Tadashi handed him a mug. And now, of all things, he decided it was a good time to set free that giganto-mega-watt grin. Tadashi smiled. The world went quiet. Hiro felt like crying. 

"Hey," Tadashi said, and he settled the mug onto the counter. He furrowed his eyebrows. His smile retreated. He was so close Hiro could smell that fresh laundry detergent smell. And the warmth. He could smell the warmth. Hiro curled into his sweater and let his hair hide his face. His cheeks were burning, dripping, leaking down his skull. He couldn't believe he was actually crying. 

"Hey," Tadashi said again. It was so faint Hiro thought he'd imagined it. Tadashi was right in front of him, and his knees bumped against the bottom of Tadashi's ribcage. He was hard and soft at the same time. Hiro could feel him breathing through his kneecaps. Languid. Like early morning tides. And Hiro was so scared that Tadashi would pull him close, that Tadashi would press him against his chest and make him feel all of it. Because that was such a  _Tadashi_ thing to do. He went through life smiling at strangers and having fantastic small-talk, laughing, helping. Hugging. Hiro didn't want Tadashi to touch him. He was already inside of his head. He didn't need him inside of his skin, too. He didn't need him.  

Hiro gulped for air. There was nothing in his lungs. 

Tadashi took his hands. He didn't grab them. He didn't snatch them. He didn't tug them out of his way-too-long sleeves. 

Tadashi  _took_ Hiro's hands, and he just held them, just kept his small hands in his big hands. Hiro's fingers were resting in two deep burrows.

Tadashi held Hiro's hands the way sailors pulled men overboard out of the undertows. It wasn't careful or quiet. It was secure, like he wanted to make sure Hiro didn't fall back in so the tide could take him.  Their fingers twisted and curled, gripping into each other like they were fighting through a turbulence.

Hiro didn't know how something that felt so rough could look so tender - delicate like a heartbeat or a sigh or the color of the moon.  

Their hands were art, real-life mosaic. Big. Small. Pale. Flushed. Smooth. Bruised. Soft. Stitched.  Shapes and harmonies and lovely little angles.

Hiro closed his eyes. He didn't fall the way he usually did. He didn't disappear. He stayed, knees tucked against Tadashi's stomach, hands hiding between his. It was just dark. It was the brightest shade of dark Hiro had ever seen. 

 

✦

 

It was like it had never happened. Maybe Hiro was going crazy. He was already crazy. But maybe he was leveling up, shooting further towards insanity. They'd held hands. Hiro thought they'd held hands. But now - he wasn't so sure anymore. 

He kept looking at his hands all day. 

When he woke up. When he got to work. When he slammed a screwdriver into the wood. When he cussed at Bee because he wouldn't tell him where Chess was. When he got back home. When he fell into bed and onto Mochi. When he squished Mochi against his face. When he thought about his mom. When he thought about the bruises hidden beneath her makeup and her corrupted smiles. When he was seconds away from slipping into the stars. 

His hands didn't look so big like this. They didn't look the way they'd looked like in his hands. They didn't feel the way they'd felt like pressed into his heartlines. They didn't look like a natural phenomenon. They didn't look like art. Now, they were just parts of his body, elongations of his arms, skin and bone and knuckles and fingernails. Now, they were just hands. 

Hiro didn't know what to do with them. Fucking hands. 

 

✦

 

"Hi."

"Hi."

"How do you - How are you? Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah. Like...I think. I think I feel better."

"Good. I'm glad you're feeling better. Great. Cool."

"Yeah. Cool."

"Are you okay to go again?"

"What?"

"Sorry.  _Sorry_. I just - I mean, with the -"

"The project?"

"Yes. The project. But we don't have to. I mean, you - You don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, I want to."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Cool."

"Yeah." 

This was so awkward. Hiro didn't know what he'd expected. Normalcy? But nothing between them was normal. Hiro still wasn't sure what all of this was, but whatever it was, it wasn't normal. 

Tadashi had seen him cry. There had been snot dripping from his nose. They'd held hands. At least, that's what Hiro thought had happened. He wasn't sure. Then again, it hadn't been real hand-holding. It hadn't been the kind of hand-holding you saw in wedding pictures or Valentine's Day cards. What had happened in the kitchen had been a rescue. Hand-holding-on. 

Hiro couldn't look at him. Not now. He felt like Tadashi would never want to talk to him again if he saw his face. Because Hiro's face was burning and cooling off at exactly the same time, and his nose was tingling, and his ears were probably red. And he knew that whatever he was feeling, it was just him. It was definitely just him, because someone like Tadashi wouldn't have this kind of jumbled up jigsaw puzzle in their brain. 

Hiro's brain was a disaster. Tadashi's brain was a systematically structured pillow fort. 

They stood in front of the door leading to the garage. Nobody moved. Hiro looked at his feet, trying his best to make his face do what normal faces did. Normal stuff. Tadashi turned. Hiro watched his sneakers turn, and their tips almost touched Hiro's. Tadashi had clean shoes. Hiro's shoes looked like they'd been through hell and back. Sort of.  

"Are you sure you're feeling better?"

If he kept asking, maybe Hiro wouldn't be able to lie anymore. He loved lying. It was so easy. All he needed to do was twist a few words, and he could dodge bullets. But he didn't like lying to Tadashi. It felt like he was corrupting his atmosphere. 

"Yeah," Hiro said, and the air started to pollute. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Tadashi took a deep breath. "Okay," he exhaled and dug his hands into his jeans. Hiro pretended like he was okay with it. He hadn't even gotten a chance to really look at them again. Tadashi's hands. Hiro wanted to rip them out of his pockets and study every knuckle, every curve with a magnifying glass. 

Tadashi cleared his throat. "Uh - So this is the garage." 

He opened the door and shuffled down a couple of stairs. Hiro was happy there was enough space to cool off. 

"This is pretty much where I spend most of my time. They have labs at SFIT. They're great, but sometimes, I need some space. And well, this is - it."

Hiro wobbled into the garage. It was dry down here and cold. He took a gulp of air. His stomach started to crystalize. 

"Sorry. It's a little colder down here. I don't clean up much either. Sorry."

Tadashi scratched the back of his neck. He was looking down at his toes, and he tapped the heels together. Once.  

The garage looked like Tony Stark's basement - if he were younger and less rich and more clean and Asian. Half-asian. Hiro wasn't sure. And it bothered him. Not being sure. Not knowing. 

He didn't know much about Tadashi. He didn't know the things you were supposed to know about a person. 

Hiro didn't know where he was from, what his middle name was, what his favorite food was. Favorite color? Favorite band? Favorite -  _everything_? Aspirations? Where did he see himself in 30 years from now? What did he believe in? Jesus Christ? The Big Bang? Pizza delivery? What did he do when he was bored? Did he go grocery shopping with a list or without one? Did he even go grocery shopping? Did he like grocery shopping? How many times had he gotten his heart broken? Who'd broken his heart? Did he like girls? Did he like boys? Did he like both? Where were his parents? Where were they?

Hiro shook his head so fast the top of his spine cracked. Everything beneath his sweater felt itchy and loaded with static. 

"You can come here any time you like. I'll give you a key for the back door. You can use everything in here, and if you need anything, just tell me. Please, tell me. And if you need a real lab, I can get you into SFIT."

Tadashi said it in one go. It had sounded like he'd read the words out loud from some invisible piece of paper. 

He was holding up a key, and he had his arm stretched out as far away from his body and as close to Hiro's as possible. 

"Here." 

Hiro's eyes plopped out of his head. 

Tadashi cleared his throat. "The key." The key. The fucking key. 

Tadashi was giving him an excuse to barge into the spectrum whenever he wanted to. He didn't have to wait at the door. He didn't have to buy coffee. He was letting him in. Hiro. Hiro with the giant sweaters. Hiro with the ripped up hands and the dumpster sneakers. Hiro who lived in the underworld. Hiro who made dying animal sounds when he cried. 

The key felt so much bigger than Tadashi meant for it to be. To Tadashi, this was probably ordinary. This was probably something he did all the time. He probably handed over keys the way he handed over smiles or some shit. To Hiro, this was massive. This was historic. This was the beginning of time. Jesus Christ.  

Hiro stared at the key. Tadashi stared at Hiro, or at as much of Hiro as Hiro would let him see. He was looking at the key through his fringe, and it was like looking through a cracked lens - which  was why Hiro wasn't really sure if Tadashi was actually looking at him. Maybe he was looking through him, or past him, or maybe he just had his eyes open and kept his pupils from moving. 

"Here."

Tadashi bent down and took Hiro's hand. He curled the key into his palm. It was warm like he'd been holding it for a while, like he'd kept it warm just for him. Hiro looked up. His hair fell to the side, and his face was in full view. It was like holding his breath underwater. 

Hiro was so afraid of everything Tadashi was thinking right this second. He was afraid of what Tadashi could see in his face. 

And Hiro could feel him. He was cracking his head open, and he was crawling in. Tadashi smiled, and it took the fracture of a second for it to break out and burst through his face. Tadashi was laughing. Tadashi was inside. Hiro didn't mind if he stayed in there a little longer. Just for a few more seconds. Just a little bit. Maybe that would be okay. 

 

 ✦

 

"Brain food!"

The shriek startled Hiro so much he flung a pen against his forehead.

"Ow." Cass scrunched her face. "Sorry, bud."

_Bud_. 

"Come on. Lasagna!"

The thing about Cass was that she never talked like a real person. She loved enigmas.

Her eyebrows rose with each second that passed. When Hiro finally said, "Hm?", Cass' eyebrows were already gone. 

"I made food. Come eat!" 

"Oh. No, it's okay. I was about to leave anyways. It's - okay."

"Hiro, you're not leaving until you've shoveled down my lasagna. I'm pregnant and really hormonal. Don't make me drag you to the table."

Hiro couldn't help but single out 'the table'. It was 'The Table' like 'The Empire State Building' or 'The Pyramids'. Their table was a monument.  

"Hiro! Come on." Cass shuffled down the stairs, one hand pressed into her back, the other on Olive. She reached the table he was hunched over. Hiro stood up, because all he had was Leo's grumbly bear voice in his head.

_Sit_. 

But Cass rolled her eyes. She rested a hand on his shoulder. She was probably splitting her weight between the table and him. She was heavier than she looked. Then again, she was always around Leo. Leo made everybody look like a molecule. 

Hiro didn't move. 

"You should take a break," she said, and her voice wasn't too loud or too insistent. It didn't even sound like her. Hiro's shoulder was tingling beneath her fingers. They were warm. Really warm. "You've been working so hard. I barely see you upstairs, so I would really like for you to stay." She smiled. "Hiro."  

And all that hadn't been an enigma. It had been clear and structured and  polite. Cass was looking at him with crinkled eyes. 

There were exactly two options people chose from when they looked at Hiro. Either they looked so revolted they probably wouldn't touch him with a stick, or they looked like they wanted to hug him into a million pieces and feed him like a toddler. 

But Cass wasn't looking at him like that. She was looking at him the way his mom had when she'd given him pep-talks. And not the shitty kind of protocoled pep-talks that parents were supposed to give their kids because it was expected of them.  _Real_ pep-talks. Honest pep-talks that made you look bigger afterwards, that made you feel bigger afterwards. 

This was not a pep-talk. But it felt like it. Hiro felt bigger. It was just an inkling, a barely existent awareness. But it was there, and it hurt just as much as it comforted. 

"Yeah?" she asked, her smile not even wavering. Not once. 

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah," he said again because it was so good he barely felt the pain in his chest. 

 

 

 

Eating dinner with them was just like any other time. It just felt a little different. Probably because Hiro didn't. He didn't feel so different sitting at The Table. And it was sort of dangerous, being aware of the fact that he didn't feel so out of place. 

Cass and Leo were talking so loud their plates were vibrating. Tadashi was smiling like a crazy person. Every time their eyes met he started laughing - like he was even more crazy than you expected him to be. Hiro finished the food on his plate. He almost ate the plate, too. He couldn't stop staring at Tadashi's hands. He had hands for holding cutlery. He hands for holding anything. He had hands, and they were so fucking amazing.

And maybe Hiro was getting too comfortable with this. With Cass and her Neanderthal sugar daddy. With Tadashi and his hands. It was like he was drifting, like his feet were leaving the ground. Not in a good way. 

The thing about drugs was that there was this turning point, where the world they created and the world you lived in became one single messed up blob. Hiro was losing himself in an in-between. And now it just depended on what side would grab him harder. 

Tug of War. 

Hiro looked at Tadashi. Their knees bumped. Tadashi laughed, and it was silent, and Hiro wanted to hear it. He wanted to hear it as loud as possible, so loud his ear canals would turn into spectrum spirals. 

Hiro stabbed his fork into the plate. It screeched. He did it again.  

 

✦

 

It was like watching a movie for the second time, and you realized all the little things you'd missed in the background. 

Hiro hadn't noticed the awards and prizes hanging above the desk, Tadashi's name typed in cursive letters, thick paper with embroidered borders. The lamp on the desk had scrapes on the shade, the patterns disrupted by random color stains and ripped Pokemon stickers. There was a row of shoes stacked next to the wall of books. None of them were minty. None of them looked like they'd been really worn either. But the books were different. The books looked like they'd all been read over and over again, from front to back and from back to front. Crinkled spines. Flattened edges. There were little neon sticky notes peeking out of the frilled pages. The books looked like Tadashi lived in them, like he breathed between the lines. Hiro liked the window nook the most. It was right above his bed. You had to climb over the mattress to sit at the window. There was an indent on the cushion, the kind you left when you sat at the same spot for so long everything just started molding around you until it was permanent. Hiro pictured Tadashi sitting there, inhaling book after book, the world outside turning and turning. It was the nicest thing. 

There was exactly one single picture in Tadashi's room. It was on his desk, behind his laptop, framed, tiny, facing the wall. 

The whole entire house was stuffed with pictures. They were hanging on walls, crooked and chaotic. They were squeezed onto coffee tables and desks, scattered on top of chests and peaking out of open drawers. A million memories branded into each and every corner of the fundament. 

But there was exactly one single picture in Tadashi's room. Just one. 

It fit into Hiro's palm. The colors were faded, time seeping through the glass and the gaps in the polished frame. 

A man and a woman were laughing into the camera. It looked like they'd been surprised or caught, like this was the last picture of a sequence, the final picture where you grinned on instinct. The man was tall. He melted into the background. Green eyes. Chestnut hair. Green grass. Chestnut trees. And the woman looked like the sun streaming through the canopies above their heads. She had the kind of face that made your chest ache. The temperature inside of the frame was warm. Lukewarm. They were dressed in pastel and breezy clothes. Their little fingers were linked. It looked like they were in the process of making a promise, the way you used to when you were a kid. Linked little fingers. Pinky swears. Innocent oaths. 

They were so young, bright and alive and ready to spread their arms towards the sky. Hiro felt like reaching for them. He felt like crawling into the picture to touch them, to bask in them, to smile just as big as they could. This was what you were supposed to look like. This was what life was supposed to make you feel like. This was it. They were complete. 

"My parents."

Hiro hadn't heard Tadashi come up the stairs. He was standing in the door frame with two water bottles. He threw one towards Hiro, and it hit him in the chest. Hiro flailed to catch it, but he had the picture in his hand, and he couldn't let it fall. The bottle clattered to the floor. He expected Tadashi to apologize the way he always did - repeatedly, until it was one time too many. But Tadashi stayed quiet. His face was all wrong. Too tense. Too frigid. His eyes were stuck to the bottle that was rolling across the floor. 

And when Hiro really looked at Tadashi, he could see it. Those two people on the picture melting into him. Those two facades spread over him like blueprints. 

The woman's eyes were like his, big and dark, deep like the cracks in tree barks. Tadashi shared her smile. He looked like her, all soft and timid. But his stature was his father's. His hands were his father's.

Tadashi looked like his parents. 

But not now. Now, he looked different - like his parents with missing pieces, like his parents on a rainy day, like his parents after the fall. 

And Hiro knew that Tadashi knew what question was about to come. He was probably getting ready for it, wringing out an explanation he didn't know how to explain. Because Hiro knew what it felt like. Hiro knew how much it hurt to just think about it. About the question. About the answer. 

_ What happened to them? _

Tadashi was curling his fingers around the bottle so tightly it was bulging, and his eyes looked like holes, and his mouth was minuscule - and Hiro didn't want to be the one to break his face. He didn't like seeing him like this. He wanted to brighten him up, make him smile and laugh and take his big hands into his small hands. 

"So...your mom," Hiro started. 

The bottle in Tadashi's hand crunched.  

"Asian." Hiro coughed. Tadashi furrowed his eyebrows so deep it looked like he had permanent indents in his head. "Your mom's Asian." 

Tadashi's chest didn't move. The furrows retreated inch by inch. His hand was still clinging to the bottle like a lifeline. 

"Yeah," he finally said. "Japanese. She was...Japanese."

_Was_.  

Something broke. There was a rip in Tadashi's head, this crevice that was big enough for Hiro to take a peak at what was inside. Hiro wanted to claw it wide open. 

But he didn't move. 

Tadashi was still staring at the bottle in his hand. His knuckles were white. Never had he looked so small. If Hiro stood next to him,  _he'd _ probably be the one towering. Tadashi was shrinking with each second that passed. Hiro hated himself for even looking at the picture. This was his fault. Now, he was shrinking. Tadashi Matsuno was shrinking. And just when Hiro thought he was about to disappear into thin air, right before he swore he was about to get lost between the particles, Tadashi smiled.

Everything in it was missing.

"So you wanted to talk about the problems with the program boards, right?" he asked, and his voice was so warm Hiro could see it mold the air into chunky little clumps. 

"Yeah." Hiro nodded. He didn't know what else to say, what else to think. And he wondered how many times Tadashi had smiled, and he hadn't noticed the dropping temperature in his eyes. He wondered how many times Tadashi had smiled, and he hadn't payed attention to any missing pieces. 

Tadashi rubbed the back of his neck. He was still standing there, and he was still holding the bottle, and he looked kind of lost with that ruptured little thing stretching the bottom of his face from left to right. Hiro put the picture back onto the table. Carefully. Quietly. And when he walked over to Tadashi, he couldn't even hear his own steps. He curled his hand around the fingers that Tadashi had wrapped around the bottle. Hiro had expected him to be cold, but his skin was just as warm and as dry as it had been the last time. Hiro's hand wasn't big enough to fit him into his palm. But he tried to make him fit. Tadashi let go of the bottle. It clattered to the floor. And in this strange silence that was smothering the two of them, it sounded like a breath of fresh air. Loud and rushing. 

Hiro held his big hand in his small hand, and he held on as tight as he could. It hurt. His fingertips were droning over his knuckles. 

"We don't have to talk about program boards," Hiro said without hearing his own voice. He was looking up at Tadashi through his fringe, and all he could see were shards of him, fractures that he could see in his own face when he payed enough attention. 

Pale. Tired. Lost.  

Hiro smiled. He didn't care about what it looked like. He didn't care if it wasn't good enough or nice enough. Hiro smiled, and it was enough of something. It was enough to make Tadashi's smile disappear. 

Hiro didn't know if Tadashi believed in Jesus or if he went grocery shopping with a list or without one. Hiro was too much of a disaster to pay attention to any of that.  Because Hiro didn't know Tadashi the way he was supposed to. 

Hiro was blind and deaf and numbed. Tadashi was a feeling, a sense, an experience - his imagination. Tadashi was a lingering impression of something he had to make up in his chest. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Herro! I couldn't wait to write some cute, squishy Hiro thoughts! I am so corny. I mean...that last part...I just couldn't stop myself... Jesus Christ. Sorry, not sorry. Maybe a little sorry. I live for cliches - and larger than life hand-holding and crazy baby names.  
> This chapter is different than the last two. It's a little more up close and personal, I guess. I wanted to concentrate on the tone of the relationships. Hiro is very, very sensitive, and his feelings tend to be magnified. He's secretly a hopeless romantic.  
> I just want relationships to be like Disney movies *weeps* Also, describing Tadashi has become my favorite thing ever *WEEPS*  
> As always, I hope you're having a fantabulous day! It's like 3 a.m., and I'm going through a twizzler induced sugar rush. I feel like a unicorn.  
> Anywho, stay amazing and fantastic and spectacular and everything!
> 
> (I've had so much going on, and I haven't had a chance to reply to your wonderful comments! Thanks a bunch! I hope I have some time to reply soon)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, coco puffs! *aviator shades and finger guns*  
> 

"Cool." 

Hiro looked up from his notebook, angling his head so far back it hit the space between his shoulder blades. Tadashi was leaning over the back of the armchair. His eyes looked like autumn canopies. They were smiling. And Hiro's brain was deteriorating so fast he didn't have enough to time to realize that Tadashi's face was doing _that thing._ That thing  where his eyebrows rose into the sky, and his mouth flexed so far into opposite directions it was like it was trying to reach all around his skull. 

"Shut up," Hiro huffed, hiding the paper with his elbow. He'd been in the process of drawing the old woman one table away. She was wearing a fur coat, and there were tiny purple dolphins hanging from her earlobes. Her face looked like it was stuck in the process of melting. But Hiro wasn't drawing her like that. He was drawing her with her wrinkles gone, with the kind of expression she had when Tadashi smiled at her. 

"Aren't you supposed to be cracking that algorithm?" Tadashi poked the middle of his head. Hiro's higher functions were canceling themselves out one by one. Tadashi touched him so much. He poked him and flicked him and rubbed his head against his shoulder like he was a cat. And sometimes, he'd take his small hand into his big hand, and he'd just start inspecting it like it was a roadmap. Tadashi would run a finger along his knuckles, and Hiro would always be so terrified of him being able to feel his heart palpitations. Skipping beats. Short breaths. 

When Tadashi touched him like that, he flattened Hiro's crooked angles. He smoothed him over. He sculpted him into every shape and size. And everything on his head changed when he was busy altering Hiro's symmetry. His eyelids would drop a fraction like he was about to fall asleep, and his face would give way to those soft discolorations. Barely visible shadows. But Hiro could see them. He liked Tadashi's face like that the most. It was honest. It was real. It was closer to Hiro's atmosphere.  

"Hiro?" Tadashi was staring. 

"Hm?" Only now, did Hiro realize that Tadashi was staring at something far more specific. Hiro pulled the pen out of his mouth. Bad habit. Tadashi looked back up. He blinked. He looked stupid. Hiro was going through fucking cardiac arrest. 

Tadashi cleared his throat and pointed a finger at the notebook in Hiro's lap. 

"You're drawing old ladies," he said matter-of-factly. 

" _The_ old lady," Hiro corrected. 

The woman turned in her seat, arching her brow in a way that made the wrinkles bunch up around it like water ripples. It matched her dolphin earrings. She was terrifying - like ancient fire breathing dragons or satanic Math teachers hell-bent on failing your ass. 

Tadashi coughed. It was definitely a laugh. Hiro wanted to jab his elbow into his abdomen. But then he was thinking about Tadashi's abdomen, and then he was thinking about his knees pressed against Tadashi's abdomen, and then Hiro's heart started popping like a firecracker.

"Looking good as always, Bertha," Tadashi said. 

_ Bertha.  _

Bertha laughed. It was far too small for her, almost childish like she was trying her best not to hide it behind cupped hands. Her wrinkles disappeared one by one. And like this, Bertha fit into old black and white movies with Rosalind Russel and Pat O'Brien. She had a face for those kind of vintage films Hiro's mom had loved to watch on Sunday nights. 

Tadashi was a wizard. 

"I'll get you another scone. On the house, Bertha." Tadashi's smile widened into something brilliant, and he swept away, and Hiro swore he was wearing an invisible cape - with stars and gold dust and magical charms.  

Hiro hadn't noticed that he'd stuck the pen back into his mouth. He pulled it out so fast he almost chipped a tooth. Bertha was looking at him, brow still arched. She tutted with her head held high. Eyebrow even higher. She was back to being mortifying.  

If Tadashi was a wizard, then what did he do to Hiro without him knowing? Did he make his wrinkles disappear, too? Hiro didn't have many wrinkles. Just in the middle of his face. Between his eyebrows. Sometimes, he thought it was because he worried too much. Now, he just thought because he thought too much. Thinking so much couldn't be good. 

Hiro looked over at Tadashi. Their eyes met over a costumer's shoulder.  Tadashi smiled a little wider, and he waved with two fingers. Hiro clamped his bottom lip between his teeth. It was a reflex. A bad habit. 

_Don't smile. Don't let anyone see. _

But Tadashi kept smiling, and the corners of Hiro's mouth kept flexing - until he lost complete control over the lower half of his face. 

Hiro let his smile detonate. 

Tadashi ran into a shelf. 

 

 

 

Eventually, Hiro did manage to finish the shitty drawing of Bertha. He even signed it in a grown up way. Not in block letters. It was unreadable. It was pretty fantastic. He gave it to her. Bertha probably hated him a little more than before, but she'd thanked him and even smiled a bit, just enough for a few wrinkles to smooth out. Hiro hadn't had to shove a middle finger into her face, the way he'd planned to. Tadashi had been looking into his direction. Hiro hadn't wanted him to see that. If anything, Hiro wanted him to see him smile. All the time. No cussing. No brooding. Hiro wanted Tadashi to see all of his crappy, constipated smiles. 

Hiro didn't crack the algorithm. He was too busy with something else. Someone else. At this point, he didn't bother with hiding it. He was plain staring, body facing him, eyes tethered. And he liked the way Tadashi would look over his shoulder and see him, and the color of his skin would get warmer. Something pale but with a smoother undertone. 

Hiro noticed the cowlick at the nape of Tadashi's neck. It kept bouncing around. He wanted to pet it.

"My feet are killing me. I think I'll never be able to walk. You'll carry me, right?" Tadashi slumped into the seat opposite to him. The cafe was empty. It was dark out. Hiro felt like he could get away with it, with nodding and saying, "I'd carry you to the ends of the earth."

But Hiro slumped further into the leather and stayed absolutely silent. Everything in his head wasn't tangible enough for him to grasp. This was what Tadashi Matsuno induced stupidity felt like. His brain was gone. Either that or it was just being really, really quiet. 

Tadashi hadn't expected an answer. Usually, he stared at Hiro until he spit at least some gibberish out, but Tadashi was fiddling around with the shoelaces of his sneakers. Hiro watched the way the muscles in his arms tensed with the movements, bulging and retreating, straining and loosening. Hiro wanted to trace his fingernails along the indents. Maybe scrape enough to leave marks. Tadashi's skin looked like it stained easily. Too easily. 

"Hey! There they are!"

Cass wobbled through the door, Leo hot on her heels. Leo looked like he was about to fall into an eternal sleep. Cass was glowing like a lightbulb. 

"Guess who's a natural at pregnancy yoga?" she shouted. Hiro didn't think she meant for it to be a shout, but she had a tendency to get louder with the rise of her enthusiasm level. It was like turning up the volume on the radio when a good song was on.  

"Me!" She pointed at herself. She didn't know how to use rhetorical questions. "Leo sucks."

"Thank you," he grumbled from where he was ripping his bandana from his head. His hair fell into his eyes. He looked like Tarzan.

"All you had to do was support me. You made it feel like rocket science!"

"Yoga is rocket science!" 

Leo looked like he'd invented yoga. At least, he looked like he should've been the person to have invented yoga. Stereotypes. 

"When's your entourage coming over? Are they joining us for dinner?" Leo flicked Tadashi's feet from the coffee table. 

"No, they're coming at nine," he said, smacking a dishtowel against Leo's knee. 

"Alright. Hey, Hiro. Vegan empanadas, my man?"

Hiro didn't know how he managed to feel so surprised every time they asked him to stay for dinner. Or every time Tadashi asked him to come up to his room afterwards. Their table was a monument. Tadashi's room was the moon.

"Uh - No, I -" Hiro started, knotting his fingers into his sweater. Cass' eyebrows crumpled up in the middle of her face, and she looked like she was trying her best not to hug the crap out of him. "Yeah. Yes. Please. Yes, please," Hiro mumbled. It still felt uncomfortable saying 'yes'. It was like he'd been the one to invite himself. 

"Awesome. So empanadas, then." Leo ruffled a hand through his sandy hair. Hiro just hoped the guy wouldn't ask for a high-five. 

"I'm happy you found somebody," Cass said, patting one of Leo's giganto-shoulders. "Alright, we'll be upstairs. Could you boys close up?" 

Tadashi nodded. "Yup. See you in a bit."

Cass gave them a smile. When Cass smiled, it was like someone turned the lights on, like nothing had been switched on before her facial muscles had twitched, like you'd been living in the dark without even noticing. 

Leo gave them one of his was-that-a-wink-or-not winks, and he scooped Cass into his arms and carried her through the beaded curtain like he was Superman flying Louis Lane into the clouds. Hiro could hear the residue of Cass' giggles long after they'd left. It was tickling his ear drums. He kept rubbing his ears like they were itching. 

Tadashi took a breather before jumping out of the chair and swinging towards the next table. _Swinging._  He didn't look tired at all. He looked like he'd just downed a million espressos. 

Hiro helped him with cleaning up, the way he always did. It had gotten easier. Their routine. On weekdays, Hiro would come in the morning. He'd leave for work and come back for his project the second he got off. Tadashi's garage was like Dexter's Laboratory. Digital Wonderland. And it was different compared to Tadashi's room. You could feel that he spent more time down there than in his bed. You could smell it, hear it - taste it. Everything was a few degrees warmer than you'd expected. The undertones. The tinges. The hum of the power sockets. The metal beneath your fingertips. The glow of the light bulbs. The touch of the atmosphere. 

"You can stay if you like." 

Hiro flailed to keep the chair from flinging itself off of the table. Tadashi snorted. Hiro wanted to catch his snorts and eat them. They were wonderful. 

"You know, after dinner. You can stay. My friends are coming over," Tadashi said. He was behind the counter cleaning empty coffee mugs. Hiro turned the last chair upside down and slid it onto the nearest table. 

"Oh." Hiro looked down at his shoes. They were even more scratched up than the tiles below. "No, it's okay. I don't want to...like...intrude."

Hiro had just said 'intrude'. It felt just as weird as it had probably sounded coming from someone like him. _Intrude_.  Jesus Christ.

"You wouldn't be intruding, Hiro." When Tadashi said 'intrude', it sounded perfect. He could get away with saying stuff like 'sublime' or 'henceforth or 'jocular'. If Tadashi ever said 'jocular', Hiro would be done for. 

"I - " Tadashi gripped the back of his neck. He always did that when he didn't know what to say like he needed the support of something reeling him in. To ground him. To help him. Hiro liked when he did that around him. It was like he needed something to keep him steady. 

"I want you to stay," Tadashi said. Hiro swallowed. The air felt heavy. "I mean, I - want you to stay so you can, you know - meet them." Tadashi looked back down at the mug in his hands. "My friends." 

Hiro walked over to his backpack, pretending like he needed something in the front pocket. 

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Hiro said. 

"Why?" Tadashi had his cocked to the side. Hiro knew what he was doing. He let his fringe fall into his eyes as if that could keep Tadashi from crawling into his skull. 

"Because..." _Because_   _look_ _at me. I don't even know how I got you to like me. Do you even like me? The way I want you to like me? How the hell do I want you to like me? What does that even mean? Am I reading you wrong? What is all of this anyways? Jesus fucking Christ, stop smiling. _

Hiro didn't know how to squeeze all that into some passive aggressive sentence that would keep Tadashi wondering for days. So he didn't say anything at all. 

"Please, just - _stay._ "

"Why?"  

"Because...I really, really want you to stay." 

And then the air started weighing a gazillion tons, and Hiro could feel it cementing in his lungs, and it was pulling his whole entire body towards the center of the earth. 

When Tadashi said shit like that, Hiro's heart just stopped doing everything altogether. Like everything in his body just forgot how to function. Like he was dead for a few seconds. 

Dead with his eyes wide open. 

 

 

 

Hiro went into hiding the second the doorbell rang. He was in the toilet, leaning against the back of the door like a block of wood could keep the world out long enough. 

He was hiding in the bathroom. He was pathetic.

_ Stupid.  _

Hiro tried to picture them in his head. Tadashi's friends. They were probably all beautiful and perfect, with white smiles and impeccable color coordination. Hiro felt like this was the right time to use 'impeccable'. Because those were the kind of people he could see Tadashi hanging out with. Nice-looking people. People like Tadashi. And if Leo called them his 'entourage', they probably strutted around with aviator shades and five-o'clock shadows. Except for the girls. Hiro expected Tadashi to have girlfriends. Girl friends. Friends that were girls. Pretty ones. With manicures and shiny hair. 

And boobs. 

Hiro stared down at his chest. 

"Hiro?" 

_No._

"Hiro, I know you're hiding in there." 

_ No. _

"They're in the living room. You can come out." Tadashi's voice was so close it felt like his head was pressed against the other side of the door. 

"No, I'm fine in here." Hiro was so stupid.

"I have a key for the door."

He had no idea how Tadashi could threaten you without actually threatening you. 

"They're really nice people. I promise."

"'Nice' can be subjective."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"They won't bite." And now Hiro felt like a five-year-old. Then again, he was acting like one. He was being stupid. 

Hiro looked at himself in the mirror. It was so quick his face was a smudge. Staring at his feet was better. He bent down to scratch a stain away from the rubber tip. His shoes still looked like he'd dragged them through the underworld.

"Hiro?" 

Hiro flattened his hair into his eyes, just enough to tinge the world a few shades darker. He took a deep breath. He held it until his chest vibrated and his jaw started to clench. 

Fuck. 

"Please?"

And with the most thorough exhale of all time - he ripped the door open. Tadashi was so close Hiro almost bumped his nose into his chest. His cheeks went hot. 1000-degrees-fahrenheit-hot. 

"Hi," Tadashi said from above. Hiro didn't look up. He could smell laundry detergent and fruit baskets and lukewarmth. He wanted to dig his face into Tadashi's chest and suffocate. 

"Do you think I'm nice?" Hiro asked. And he hadn't even realized he'd spoken until it was too late to stuff the words back into his mouth.

Tadashi shifted. His head went crooked.

"Not in the conventional sense. No." He bent down, and he pressed Hiro's head between his hands. He was squishing his cheeks. He smiled. Hiro could hear it. The flex of his muscles. The flesh of his mouth rubbing against his teeth. Tadashi's hands molded around Hiro's jaw, and he kept him there. He kept him from slumping into his skin and hiding behind his hair. Tadashi took a breath, words getting ready to burst into their shared atmosphere. "But outside of the conventional...you're stupendous." 

Hiro had been wrong about 'jocular'. 'Stupendous' did it. 'Stupendous' ended him. 

Hiro's body stopped working. Hiro was dead with his eyes open. Hiro was _stupendous_. 

 

 

 

Tadashi's entourage didn't wear aviator shades. They didn't have five-o'clock shadows or manicures. They  _did_ have shiny hair. Especially the tall girl with the big glasses and the gooey smile. She hadn't stopped smiling since Hiro had stepped into the room, all creepy and spindly. She had her mile-long legs perched on another girl's lap. She was smaller. Angrier. She looked like a mean version of Raven from Teen Titans. Just minus the cape and the superpowers. She was chewing gum. Hiro was afraid she'd want to bite his face off - and chew him, too. But she was too busy staring holes into the giant sitting on the coffee table. Hiro had no idea how he'd gotten through the door. Or how he managed to not break the coffee table. He was bigger than Leo. Way bigger. He looked like he'd been given steroids the second he'd popped out of the uterus. Hiro liked his dreads. They were cool, like Bobby-McFerrin-cool. And then there was the kid lying on the floor. Beanie. Oily hair. Loose shoelaces. The Stoner. 

Hiro didn't feel so bad about his sweater anymore.

They looked like the strangest constellation of people Hiro had ever seen. Together, squashed onto the sofa and the fuzzy red carpet, they looked like collective contrasts, colors on a color pallet, sizable opposites. And Hiro remembered that one time in grade school when his class hadn't wanted to shut up about this zoo in Omaha, where all the cages hadn't been closed properly, and the animals had started mixing up their territories. 

"Oh my god, he's so adorable!" The girl with the spider legs squealed so high Hiro swore the residue would be ringing in his ears for days. 

"Don't be creepy. Ignore her. She thinks everything under 1,50 is adorable," the other girl said. The one with the angry eyes and the gum. Hiro scrunched his face. He was taller than 1,50.

"Okay, guys. Uh - this is Hiro." 

Hiro wanted to curl up into a ball and hide behind Tadashi's legs. 

"Hiro like Superhero?" The Stoner lifted himself from the floor, one hand keeping his beanie in place. His eyes were red. 

_I wish,_ Hiro thought. 

"Hiro, like - just Hiro. With an I," Hiro said. His fingers were back to twisting themselves into his sweater. 

"Awesome, man," The Stoner said. He had a low singsong voice like he was drifting through some invisible ocean, wave after wave. Hiro wanted to have whatever he was having. Salt in his lungs. He needed to take the edge off. His heart was hyperventilating. 

"Anyways," he singsonged. "That's Wasabi...Honey-Lemon...Gogo..." He pointed at the tiny circle huddled in the living room with the tip of his shoe. "And I'm Fred. Didn't want a nickname."

"Cool," Hiro said. His voice was microscopic. Everybody was staring. Hiro stared at his feet. "Hi," he pressed out. His stomach started pulling itself together like it was shrinking, shriveling, trying its best to reduce its capacity. Hiro wished his existence could follow suit. 

"Hi!" Honey-Something was practically leaking enthusiasm. She smiled, and Hiro swore there was a cloud of glitter lighting up her atmosphere. "We're gonna watch The Avengers. Hope that's okay. Come sit!" 

Hiro felt a hand on the dip of his back. He sucked in so much air he thought his chest would explode. Tadashi was touching his back, barely, but his fingers were pressed against the material of his sweater, and he could feel his nails hovering right above his skin. And then Tadashi pressed him forward. Hiro stumbled further into the living room. Tadashi's hand on his back was like whiplash. He was in a spaceship. He was crashing through the sky. He didn't dare let the air out of his lungs. He was scared he wouldn't know how to breathe, how to stand, how to jumpstart his heart.

And then it stopped. Tadashi let go. Hiro fell back into the living room. Honey-Something was still smiling. She was all lipgloss and dewy skin. 

"Sit," she said, kicking the girl with the death-ray-eyes further against the other side of the couch. Hiro was small enough to fit. He sat down. He wanted someone completely different next to him. But Tadashi disappeared with a quick "I'll make some popcorn". Hiro stared after him. 

_ Take me with you. Don't leave me here.  _

He felt like a kid on his first day of school. 

 

 

 

Tadashi's friends were just as nice as Hiro had thought they'd be. Even the girl with the 'I'll eat you, motherfucker' face was nice. Legitimately nice. So nice, Hiro smiled. Just once. Small enough for nobody to see. 

Hiro stayed silent. He didn't know how to answer any of their questions. They didn't have many anyways. Hiro was glad. He didn't want to let the bullshit in his brain splatter across the floral-printed tapestry - or their nice smiles. He didn't look at them much. His attention stayed strained against his sneakers and the fingers that had been swallowed by his sweater. He let his hair fall further into his face. He listened to the conversations with his eyes closed. Their voices morphed into a steady background noise. Verbal harmonies. And Hiro wondered how it would feel like to have these voices around him all the time. When he got sad. When he got more lonely than usual. When he got angry. When he didn't want to get out of bed. When he felt like running and leaving the world behind. 

Voices like these made you want to stay. 

Tadashi came back with a bucket full of popcorn. Not a bowl or a sizable pot. A bucket. Fred ripped it out of his hands at light speed. Hiro would've never guessed that he'd be capable of moving so fast. 

Tadashi zeroed in on Hiro the second he stepped onto the carpet. There was this careful little thing tugging at his lips. A silent 'okay?'. Hiro nodded. Tadashi nodded, too. And then he sat down on the floor, right next to Hiro's legs. It took him every ounce of self-control to not press his calf against Tadashi's arm. 

They watched the movie until the last conversations had died down and the popcorn bucket was empty - and Tadashi's arm was pressed tight against Hiro's leg. 

It was all Hiro could think about. This. This constant contact. He'd probably rip off parts of his skin if he moved away. They were molded. 

Hiro couldn't concentrate on the happenings on the screen. His eyes flicked from left to right, stuck to yellow heels and bubble-gum-cheeks and dreads and untied shoelaces. But his eyes kept tugging him the other way. 

And then he was just staring at the back of Tadashi's head. He hadn't been wearing his cap all day. Hiro liked him without a cap. He had nice hair. It wasn't black exactly.Dark with a mood. And when the light caught the strands, it flamed a little like tiny sparks, like ignitions, like his skull was seconds away from an inferno. 

Hiro's eyes traveled lower. He stared at the cowlick. It was driving him batshit. 

"Yo, Dashi. Can you make some more?" Fred had wormed his way over to the couch. He was lying in front of Tadashi's feet, a giant smile on his face, empty bucket in his hands. Tadashi's shoulders shook. He snorted. 

"I can make some," Hiro said. Tadashi turned. His head went crooked. 

"S'okay." Hiro lifted his eyebrows. Tadashi's head went even more crooked. Hiro huffed. 

"I know how to use a microwave," Hiro said. "Just tell me where the popcorn is?"

"Top right cupboard. Next to the fridge," Gogo said, eyes strained against the TV screen. Her face looked like someone had wiped off all emotion with a Kleenex. Gogo had the best poker face of all time. 

Hiro nodded and ripped his calf from Tadashi's arm. He almost hissed. It was some sort of reflex, some sort of expectation that it would hurt. It didn't hurt. It just made his leg burn. 

Hiro shuffled out of the room. He took a deep breath when he climbed up to the kitchen. Everything outside was colder, fresher like the first breath you took after eating mint candy. 

He found the popcorn. He found the microwave. He could read instructions. He didn't know why Tadashi had looked at him like he'd sacrificed himself for a gladiator fight. It was just popcorn. 

"Hey." 

Hiro twitched from where he was hunched in front of the microwave, watching the bag pucker up. 

Tadashi was leaning against the fridge. He should never stop wearing cardigan sweaters. Never ever.  

"Hi," Hiro said. He cleared his throat from the clumps. 

"You okay?" Tadashi dug his hands into his pockets. He furrowed his eyebrows. 

_Sometimes,_ Hiro thought. 

"It's just popcorn," Hiro said. 

"I didn't mean the popcorn."

"Oh. You mean -" Hiro looked at the fingers he'd stuck into his sweater. He gripped the material tight. "They're _nice._   Like...I didn't think they'd actually be so...nice and -"

"Normal?"

Hiro scrunched his nose. 

"You looked like..." Tadashi swallowed. "You looked like you were afraid of my friends being -"

"Stuck up, rich nerds."

"Stuck up, rich nerds? Do I look like I hang out with stuck up, rich nerds?"

"A bit."

"Really?"

"It could be worse."

"Like what?"

"You could look like you live in a dumpster and snort coke all day." Hiro gestured towards himself. Tadashi's smile went berserk. 

"A dumpster, huh?"

"It's a nice dumpster though."

"Well, I am so relieved."

Hiro cracked a tiny, constipated smile. He lifted himself onto the counter. The microwave was warm against his arm. Tadashi hooked his hand on the back of his neck. He looked at his feet. Then at Hiro. 

"You know...I think your friends are probably all underground rockstars who fly you to the moon and everything."

Hiro laugh-barked. 

"That crazy?" he asked.

"That _exciting_ , " Tadashi said. 

Hiro stayed quiet. So that's what Tadashi thought his life was like. Hiro wished it was like that. He wished it was exciting and phenomenal and moon-fly-worthy. And now that he thought of it, being at the cafe was probably the closest thing he had to that. 

To the moon. 

"This - this right here is exciting," Hiro said, and let his nicest smile take over. At least, it was supposed to be nice. He hoped it looked nice. "I don't have underground rockstar friends who fly to me to the moon. And I - I bet that would be freaking insane, but until then, this pretty much does it for me." Hiro shifted further across the counter until his head bumped against a cupboard. "This is exciting."

Tadashi let go of his neck. "Until then, huh?"

"Yeah. Until then, you've got time to level up and make this phenomenal." Hiro's smile widened so much it felt like his face would never be able to return to neutral. And the wider Hiro smiled, the more Tadashi's smile retreated. Hiro didn't mind. Tadashi didn't have to smile. Hiro would smile for him. Even if his smiles weren't as nice. 

"I thought that's why you left," Tadashi said. 

"Hm?" It took Hiro a while to attach Tadashi's voice to his words. It was like they hadn't been able to synchronize. Hiro's head was hazy.

"The room. To make - popcorn. I thought it was too boring for you."

"No." Hiro shook his head. "No, it was - just -"  _It was just...I don't know. _ "You guys are not boring. You're like...comfortable. And aren't those the best people you want around? People who make you feel comfortable? People who are comfortable around you? It's - not boring." Hiro was back to staring at his hands. "It's nice," he said.  _Really, really nice._

Hiro was used to garage rock and lo-fi and bar-fights-for-fun and a bucket of Molly in a bumped-up truck with a flat tire. Tadashi's friends were bubble-gum popsicles, the kind that came stuck together, and you had to snap one off to eat it. 

"What about your friends?" Tadashi asked. He looked so serious his mouth was barely visible. 

"My rockstar friends?"

"Yeah."

_ They're not my friends. _

"They're all assholes." 

_They're not my friends._

Tadashi had walked up to the counter. His abdomen was a few inches away from Hiro's knees. 

"And me?" 

"Are you an asshole?"

"No...am - am I your - " Tadashi inhaled. "Friend?"

_ Friend.  _

The word hurt just as much as it healed. Maybe because Tadashi didn't  feel like a friend. Or maybe Hiro had forgotten how a friend was supposed to feel like. 

Hiro flicked Tadashi's forehead. He flinched, but he didn't back away. Hiro had hoped he would. He didn't know what to do with Tadashi this close - what to do with  _himself_ with Tadashi this close. 

"Am I an asshole though?" Tadashi asked. And if Hiro had thought Tadashi had been close a few seconds ago, he'd been wrong. Very wrong. If gravity shifted half a fraction, their faces would touch. They were millimeters away from falling into each other. This was the closest they'd ever been. 

Tadashi had tiny freckles on his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Hiro wanted to count them, trace them with a pen, find the Big Dipper. 

"I don't even think you could say asshole - let alone be one," Hiro said, rolling his eyes so hard the top of his sockets tingled. 

"I can say - it," Tadashi retaliated. He sounded like a kid in a sandbox.

"Say it." 

"What?"

"Asshole."

"Why?" 

"Just say asshole."

Tadashi was looking at Hiro like he was asking him to lick the floor. Hiro's chest was vibrating with a laugh he was trying to keep in check. He lifted his eyebrows. He couldn't do it as well as Tadashi could, but he tried. Tadashi had his head angled low, and he was looking at him with his eyes hiding in the shadows of his lids. 

"Asshole," he mumbled. Hiro wanted to squish his cheeks like grandmothers did on television - or in real life. He wouldn't know. 

"Okay, now say fucktard." Hiro smiled. With his teeth and everything. It still felt weird. Tadashi snorted. They still sounded eatable. 

"Now you're pushing it." There was a controlled smile tugging at Tadashi's face, and Hiro knew he was holding back the biggest grin of all time. Tadashi's face was going to burst. Hiro wanted to see it explode. 

"You're such a dork," Hiro said. Tadashi gripped the back of his neck. For a second, Hiro swore he could feel the radiations of the microwave ripple through each layer of his skin. 

"So...you'd be okay with a dork being your friend?" Tadashi asked, and it was barely loud enough for anyone to hear. 

Hiro's knees were so close to Tadashi's sweater he could feel the static in his bones. 

_Friend._  

"Yeah," Hiro said and nodded. "Yeah. I'd be okay - with that."

The microwave timer hit zero. Tadashi's face exploded. 

 

✦

 

_ Friend. _

Hiro knew what friends were. He'd had friends at his old school. He'd had friends before his mom had let his father back home, before she'd lost her job, before they'd had to move a million miles away. 

Before Hiro's life had been turned upside-down. 

Hiro knew what it was like to have friends - real friends - the kind that you could lean on without them wanting anything in return.

And maybe he'd forgotten all about those kind of friends. After all those years, it felt like they'd just turned into a myth, like unicorns or Kenneth Arnold seeing a UFO. 

But they were real, and they were even nicer than Hiro remembered. And they kept getting nicer, so nice he had to smack his hands against his ears, and squint with his eyes, and curl up into a ball, and fall to his knees. It was all too much at once. Sensory overload.  

These kids were like The Breakfast Club - just on the down-low and plus a whole lot of genius. And Tadashi was part of this Down-Low-Genius-Breakfast-Club. It was so strange realizing that Tadashi existed outside of Hiro's periphery. He knew it was stupid to think that Tadashi's whole entire life would just pause whenever they weren't together. Because when they weren't together, Hiro had to deal with everything else in  his life. Without Tadashi. But during that time, during Hiro not being there, Tadashi had his own reality. He had hobbies and school projects and future plans and family - and friends. Tadashi Matsuno wasn't just some two-dimensional character that walked through Hiro's story whenever he felt like having him around. The world kept turning. Everywhere. And while Hiro was breathing, the whole entire globe was, too. Everything kept happening around him. Nothing stopped for him. Tadashi didn't stop for him. And that was the weirdest part, realizing that he kept going while Hiro wasn't around.

He couldn't help but wonder if Tadashi felt the same way. About Hiro being real somewhere else. Real for someone else.

 

 ✦

 

"Fucking bastard!" 

Chess wasn't there. Chess hadn't been to work in weeks. Even Bee was close to letting a word slip. Blake was shoving Chess' workload onto their backs like it was nothing. It was everything. Hiro's fingers were shaking. His eyes were burning, praying for him to close them for more than just three hours. The air in the workshop was heavy like something that had been used too much, too quickly.

"If he's not back soon, his ass is fired. That little bastard!" 

Blake slammed her fists onto Chess' worktable. She was fuming. She was radioactive. 

Chess was so dead. Deader than dead. 

"Where the fuck is he!? We can't keep the shop running without him. We're late on the mortgage. Fucking late. That lazy-ass motherfucker. "

It was like Blake inhaled air and exhaled profanity - through her mouth and her nostrils and her ears and her eyeballs. Even when she was completely silent, you could see the muck dripping out of her pores. She was a frail little body of vulgarity. 

"Hamada!" 

Hiro jerked. He held his breath. He didn't know why. Maybe not breathing would make him feel less there. 

"Tell him I've got it up to fucking here." Blake lifted a hand into the air and stabbed her razor claws into the atmosphere. Her eyes were narrowed like a panther ready to pounce. She was going to tear something apart. Probably the Milky-Way galaxy and everything beyond. 

"Hamada! Look at me!" 

Hiro did. He was already staring at her. He didn't even dare to blink. He was scared she was going to bite his neck raw and open the second he closed his eyes. And then he'd never open them again. 

"Yes," he said, and he didn't know why. 

"I want him to know that he can pack up his shit if he's not here soon. I'm done with that little prick. Done. He thinks he has a choice? He thinks he can just show up whenever the fuck he wants to? All of our asses are on the fucking line here. If he's not here, we might as well all pack up. You think I can just find a replacement in this shithole? They're all dumb shits! Dumb...motherfucking...little...good for nothing...fucked up _shits_! " Blake was wringing for words. She sounded like she was suffocating. Dying. It was terrifying.  

Hiro took a peek at Bee. The big guy was slumped over his table. Even his bald head looked dull like Blake had blown away all the polish. 

She was steaming, nostrils flared wide. Her lungs were trying to devour all the sweat and rusted steel. She probably ran on fumes - and the smell of dead things.  

"Tell him that," she said. It was nothing but a spit. There was saliva in Hiro's hair. 

And like this, Blake sort of reminded Hiro of Vanessa. With her black curls and her even darker eyes. It was always in the eyes. Blake's eyes were mad. Crazy-mad. Like she was going to burst out laughing any second, and you knew your insides would freeze up. Because that's how people laughed when they had a screw loose. Terrifying. Psychotic. Something that made your body stop. 

But compared to Vanessa, Blake was toned down. Blake was barely a whisper. Vanessa was a scream that ripped through the dark.

 

✦

 

Hiro could smell the smoke the second he stepped into the corridor. His steps sounded like they were being swallowed by a void, like they seized to exist before his feet even hit the floor. The tiles were scratched, stained, abused by too many feet, too many cigarette buds. Hiro remembered having that floor inches away from his face. His cheeks had brushed those tiles far too many times for him to count. It was weird seeing the floor sober. It was weird seeing the corridor absolutely motionless, without the walls turning or caging him. 

The doors all looked the same. Carbon copies. Flaking red. Grey cracks. Scratched up door knobs. Eyes staring at him behind the peepholes. 

Hiro kept his eyes glued to the ceiling. The light tubes were fizzing all by their lonesome, dark debris collected in their bellies. Dead bugs. Lots and lots of dead bugs. The water spots were still there. It looked like the ceiling was infected with some strange disease. Zombie ceiling. Ready to crumble down and eat his brain. 

Hiro's eyes tingled. He knew it wasn't the brightness that was coaxing out tears. It was the smell. The smoke. He didn't know if it had actually gotten worse compared to the last time he'd been here - or if he'd just gotten far too used to clean things. Nice things. Alive things. 

This was an urban graveyard. 

Hiro stopped at number 354. He didn't move. 

 

 _ Hiro took a deep breath. His vision was blurry. It felt like he was moving through water. Thick water. Gooey water. He knocked. Something crumbled beneath his knuckles. He'd missed the door. He'd knocked against the wall. Fuck.  _ _ He tried again. He managed to hit the door this time. At least, that was what he was hoping for.  _

 

Hiro kicked the tip of his shoe against the door. It clattered like all it needed was one more kick for it to break in. There were scratches bunched around the metal, scrapes caused by keys that hadn't been capable of hitting their target. Some of those scrapes were Hiro's. It was hard finding a keyhole when your brain was drenched. 

The door opened. The smell hit him like a freight train. 

 

_ The door opened. The world behind it smelled like something organic. A botanical garden. Just more tangy. Coarse. A dying botanical garden.  _

_ A patch of green hair peeked out of the crack in the door. Hiro didn't even know something so green could exist. His hair looked like it was contaminated. Nuclear waste. Hiro wanted to touch it. Maybe his fingers would burn off one by one. This guy had the coolest hair ever.  _

_ "The fuck do you want?" He sounded like a cat hissing. Like Mochi when she was pissed off and ready to go on a sneaker-devouring rampage. He looked like a cat, too. A cat with green hair.  _

_ "Hiro. I - I'm Hiro. Vanessa told me to - " _

_ "Shit. You're Hiro?" His eyes went wide. They were pale. Maybe they were supposed to be blue. Or maybe they had once been blue. But not now. Now, they were worn out.  _

_ The boy laughed. He sounded like a hyena.  _

_ "Well, fuck me," he shouted. It was loud, so loud Hiro wanted to smack his hands against his ears. But he didn't know where his hands were. He'd lost them on his way here. Just like his feet. And bits of his brain.  _

_ "Yeah, well - shit. She wasn't kidding. How old are you? Like...fucking 12?" _

_ Hiro shook his head."16." _

_"Fuck," he said, and he leaned in closer until Hiro could smell smoke and tabasco. His breath smelled the way his hair looked like. Something that could burn. "Your bots are damn good. 16. You gotta be kidding me. That's insane. You're insane ." _

_ He said it the same way people dislodged their jaws watching fireworks.  _

_ His eyes started to roam Hiro's face like he wanted them to dig through his skin. A search. A close examination.  _

_ And then the boy looked him dead in the eye. Hiro sucked his cheeks in.  _

_ He was staring into two snow blizzards.  _

_ "You're gonna bring in some good cash. Nobody's gonna know what hit them," the boy said.  _

_ Hiro shook his head. And that made the floor wobble. So he nodded. It wasn't any better.   _

_ "'K. Come in." The boy opened the door wider, leaning back into the apartment. "Hey, Kenta! Check this shit out. It's the new kid! Get some pizza. He's high as fuck. Like way high."  _

_ The boy snapped his head back and stared at Hiro for so long Hiro thought time had stood still without him noticing. His smile disappeared. His forehead scrunched up. He stared at Hiro's hands. Hiro stared at his forehead.  _

_ Hiro's hands were still throbbing. It felt like all his fingers had been ripped off by the knuckles. Hiro hated his hands.  _

_ "And some gauze," the boy added. "Lots of gauze."  _

 

Hiro closed his eyes for a second, curling his hands into fists. And there was this tiny part of him that hoped he'd see green when he opened his eyes again. Toxic green. Contaminated green. Something so green it should be labeled as hazardous. But when Hiro opened his eyes, all he could see was a patch of dark hair on top of a patch of dark skin. 

Kenta still looked the same. It was like his body had stopped changing the second Hiro had left the apartment behind, the second he'd left Vanessa behind.  

It was like Kenta's world had been put on pause. 

"Holy shit," he said. "Well, if it isn't the little genius!" Kenta smiled. His teeth were still the whitest things in existence. Hiro didn't know how someone like Kenta could keep his teeth so clean. With all the crap he pumped into his system, clean teeth couldn't be an outcome. It probably had something to do with his voodoo queen ancestors. Kenta used to say his family practiced black magic. There was a time where Hiro had believed him. But that was a time where Hiro hadn't been right in the head. Not that he was now. He had no fucking clue. 

"Where's Chess?"

"I haven't seen you in a freaking year, and I don't even get a 'hello'? Not even a little one? Not even a 'Holy crap, Kenta, I missed you so much!'"

"That's bull, and you know it. Where's Chess?" 

"You look really good. What d'you take? Fucking happy pills?" Kenta leaned out of the door, his face crashing into Hiro's territory. 

"Where the fuck is he, Kenta?"

"How the hell should I know? "

"You live with him."

"And?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Kenta, who's at the door?" A voice slipped through the crack. It was tiny. Female. 

"Just an old - " Kenta's forehead ruffled, and a few wrinkles bunched above his eyebrows. He was too young to have so many wrinkles. Kenta used to say they made him look wise. Hiro thought they made him look run-down, tired, used one too many times.

"An old... colleague ," he said, dark eyes strained against Hiro's - like he was challenging him to something. 

"Come in." Kenta grinned. Feral. His teeth were too bright, too big. His smile took over half of his face as if he was being split open, skin tearing, bones cracking.

_ Come in.  _

_ Come back into the rabbit hole.  _

_Down, down, down. _

"Come in, Hiro."

 

_ Hiro came in. The boy's hair was the brightest thing in the room. Everything in its wake was muted, forced to complete and utter silence. Hiro couldn't look at this guy without his eyeballs leaking out of his head. He closed his eyes. The back of his lids were stained green.  _

_ Green. Green. Toxic green.  _

_ "Holy fuck."  _

_ Hiro opened his eyes. There was a large shadow standing next to the boy. A shadow with giant teeth. White fractures. Hiro ducked away. He stumbled. His feet wouldn't listen to whatever was left of his brain. He closed his eyes again. He closed them as tight as he could until all he could see were tiny sparks swimming in a patch of nothing.  _

_ "Whoah. Steady." _

_ Something curled its way into his arm. Something small and warm and tight. Hiro flinched. It hurt.  _

_ "Kenta, get him to the couch." _

_ "How old is this kid?" _

_ "12." _

_ "16," Hiro said. At least, he thought he'd said it. He just wasn't sure if his mouth had been open while he'd said it.  _

_ "Shit, he's perfect. Where the hell did she find him?" _

_ "Where do you think?" _

_ Hiro tumbled forward. His knees hit something. He groaned.  _

_ "Get the table out of the goddamned way, Kenta." _

_ "Calm the fuck down, Chess. You're killing my vibes." _

_ Chess. Like chess. The game. Hiro was good at chess. Hiro hated chess.  _

_ "Your vibes? What the fuck does that even - Get the gauze, you dickhead." _

_ Hiro laughed. He couldn't help it. The grip around his arm tightened. He fell back. Into a cloud. A cloud caught him.  _

_ "Jesus fucking Christ. What else did you take?" _

_ Hiro opened his eyes.  _

_ Chess. Chess like the game.  _

_ He was looking down at him. There was a crack between his eyebrows. Hiro wanted to touch it. But then it smoothed over, and it disappeared. His eyebrows were barely even there. They were practically white. He looked like he didn't have eyebrows. People were supposed to have eyebrows. Hiro touched his own face. His fingers found his eyebrows.  _

_ "Did she find him in the pits?" The shadow was back. He had a box in his giant hands.  _

_ "Yeah. Kid's bot trashed the Skavinsky's. One round. That's some crazy-ass shit for a newbie." _

_ "Damn. He's gonna bring in some serious cash." _

_ "Yeah." _

_ "What's up with his hands?" _

_ The shadow shoved Chess aside. Hiro retreated. He wanted the couch to swallow him. _

_ "Hey, kid. What's up with your hands?" _

_ The shadow was so close Hiro could taste his voice on the pad of his tongue. Smokey. Charred. Bad things. Hiro closed his eyes. _

_ Go away.  _

_ "Back the fuck off, Kenta."  _

_ Hiro blinked. The shadow was gone. Hiro could breathe. But he could still smell him.  _

_ "His name's Hiro." _

_ "Yeah, whatever, man." _

_ Steps. A clank. A creak. A bang. A door shuddering at the hinges.  _

_ "He's an asshole," Chess said. Hiro blinked. "Everybody here's an asshole. You just gotta deal with it. Or...you know...you gotta be an even bigger asshole. Works for me anyways."  _

_ Hiro closed his eyes. The world was turning like a merry-go-round. Round and round and round.  _

_ "Hands." _

_ Hiro snapped his eyes open.  _

_ "Give me your hands."  _

_ Hiro hid his hands beneath his thighs. The crack between Chess' eyebrows was back. It was bigger this time. Angrier. _

_ "Jesus fucking - Look, just give me - Give me your hands." Chess stretched his palms out. Hiro stared at them. His palms had cracks, too. And scratches. And bruises. Like Hiro's hands. Just a little bigger.  _

_ "What do you think I'm gonna do? Chop them off? Give me your fucking hands." His voice sounded like it was being ripped out of the pits of his stomach. Hiro gave Chess his hands. Chess was going to chop his hands off now. Hiro closed his eyes. Merry-go-round.  _

_ But the pain didn't come. No chop. Just coarse fingers gliding over his wounds. The boy's hands were cold. Scratchy. But it was okay. It felt good touching hands without them wanting to hurt him.  _

_ "Hope the other guy looks worse."  _

_ Hiro shook his head. He hoped not.   _

_ "This is gonna sting. Just keep your eyes closed. And don't kick me in the balls. I'll kick you back." _

_ It stung. Alcohol always stung. Hiro clenched his teeth into their slots. His fingers were wet. Aching. Biting. Chess had probably poured the whole bottle onto Hiro's hands. He could feel each of his veins throbbing to some discordant rhythm he could feel in his head, too. Everything was pounding. The leftover remnants of foreign fists. He still had the beat of them in his brain.  _

_ Hit. Smash. Pound. Pound. Hit. Jab. Jab.  _

_ Something soft was pressed against his knuckles.  _

_ "Breathe. Your face is blue." _

_ Hiro breathed. His chest opened up.  _

_ The softness wrapped itself around his hands. Again and again and again. Hiro opened his eyes. He watched Chess turn his hands into white packages. Like birthday gifts. All he needed was a bow. _

_ Chess did it quickly. Too quickly. Like he knew what he was doing. Like he'd done it too many times to be patient.  _

_ Hiro's hands were hot. His knuckles were scorching their way through the bandages.  _

_ "Vanessa said you needed a place to crash for a few nights. I don't know what a few nights means, but...yeah...I mean, you can sleep on the couch." Chess pressed his palms against Hiro's knuckles. It ached. Hiro flinched.  _

_ "Done," he said.  _

_ Hiro pulled his hands against his chest. He pressed them into the bones, hoping his ribcage would open up and let them in. So he could keep them safe. So he could give them time to fix themselves. So he could stop them from messing up his life a little more.  _

_ His hands were bad things.  _

_ Chess rubbed his fingers across his face. His skin stained red. He had thin skin. Maybe the color of his skin was just the color of his skull. His bone.  _

_ "But that's all I can give you," Chess said, and he patted the couch. "You gotta figure the rest out." _

_ Hiro nodded again, and he kept nodding until he forgot about the fact that his head was moving. The world just went up and down, up and down.  _

_ Chess was sitting on the floor. He was looking up at Hiro with an even bigger crack between his eyebrows. He almost looked sad. Hiro wanted to mold his face with his hands - make him look less sad. _

_ "She said you had some - issues at home." _

_ Hiro looked down at the hands he'd pressed against his stomach. They looked so big. All wrapped up in gauze.  _

Issues. 

_ Hiro thought that was such a grown up thing to say.  _

Issues. 

_ He shouldn't have left her there.  _

Issues. 

_ He should've taken her with him.  _

Issues. 

_ But she wouldn't have wanted to leave. She would've said that she needed to stay. And Hiro never understood that. Why would anybody want to stay in a place that couldn't be called home anymore? _

_ Chess held up a bottle.  _

_ "Drink." He shoved it so close to Hiro it bumped against his nose. "All of it," Chess said.  _

_ Hiro drank all of it. He knew it was bad when water made him want to barf.  _

_ "And I don't even want to fucking know what the hell is going on with you. Whatever it is, I don't wanna know, got it?" Chess took the empty water bottle. Hiro pressed a gauze hand against his mouth, hoping that would keep him from spitting his stomach out. He tried to nod. But nodding made his insides twist. _

_ "We're all here for a reason." Chess stood up. And like this, he looked big. Bigger than anything Hiro had ever seen. "We're all in it for something. Just..." Chess rubbed his face again. "Just know that this is nothing. Working with us is - You haven't seen shit, you know what I mean? You haven't seen shit, haven't...felt shit."  _

_ It sounded like a warning.  _

_ But Hiro didn't have a choice. He had to help. He needed to help. And this was the best he could do. This was it. Easy money. Easy getaway. Maybe she'd leave if he had enough to make them both disappear. Maybe she'd leave if she knew he would never be able to find them, to hurt them, to rip them apart all over again. _

_ Chess left the room. It was like someone had turned the lights off. His hair was a beacon.  _

_ He came back with a towel.  _

_ "Here." He threw it towards Hiro. It hit him in the face. "Don't have blankets." _

_ Chess was staring at Hiro like he was waiting for something. Hiro curled himself into a ball and pressed himself into the cushions. He was in a cloud.  _

_ "I'm Chester. Call me, Chess." _

_ "I know." _

_ "What?" _

_ "Like the game. Chess." _

_ "Fuck." Hyena-laugh. "You're so stoned." _

_ "Hiro." _

_ "I know." _

_ "Thank you," Hiro said. It was so tiny he barely felt his mouth moving. Hiro closed his eyes. Merry-go-round. Toxic green. Hits and jabs. Gauze and broken knuckles. Faces he didn't know. Faces he'd never seen. Foreign. Unimportant. He'd just hurt them. He hadn't cared. He'd just needed them to feel all the things in his head that hurt so much. He'd let his anger out on people he'd never met, on people who weren't his father, on people who didn't have hands like his.  _

_ Hiro had his father's hands.  _

_ "Just - sleep. Your head's gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow. Hands, too." _

_ And my heart. Heart, too.  _

 

 

"How long's he been missing?" Kenta stumbled back into the apartment. Hiro followed. "I mean...from work." 

"Long enough," Hiro said. He watched Kenta ram his way through everything in the corridor. The walls still smelled like mold. Hiro had almost missed it. Almost. 

"How long's he been missing from - here?"

"Look, man. I told you. I don't have a fucking clue, okay? I don't give a crap about where he is and where he isn't." Kenta was trying to stay on his feet. Hiro had to hold back the urge to ram his shoes into his heels. He wanted Kenta to eat the floor. 

"Is he with her?" Hiro asked. Kenta's shoulders tensed. 

_ He was with her.  _

"You know...he kept talking about this bot of yours." Kenta turned around, teeth in full view. He looked predatory like something hungry. Like a lone wolf. 

"He lied," Hiro said. Kenta shrugged, pushing the door to the next room open. The hinges creaked. They still creaked. It had been three years - and the hinges still creaked. Chess had said he'd fixed them. But Chess said a lot of things. 

"He sounded pretty excited. Hell, I would, too. You haven't built a bot in...what...two years?"

_ Two years._  _Since she left. _

Hiro slotted his teeth so hard his jaw started to drone. 

Kenta's grin widened into something deranged. "Too good to be true then. Vanessa would've payed to have a go. Would've wanted you back."

_She would. Of course she would. _

Kenta stumbled into the living room, the hole in the wall Hiro had lived in for longer than he would've liked. 

Torn couch. Table. Broken TV. Stained lamp stands. Ripped posters of Android Alto. And that was it. That was Hiro's past. 

"This is the new kid," Kenta said as he kicked his way towards the couch. There was a girl leaning in the corner of the room. She was tiny, barely even there. Hiro wouldn't have noticed her. She melted into the color scheme. It was like she was seeping into the wall, disappearing between the cracks and folds of the flaking tapestry. 

She was young. Too young. Too naive. Her eyes were hiding behind her hair. 

_Run. Run for your life. _

Hiro had thought of those words far too many times to be considered healthy. And he'd kept reminding himself that he hadn't been able to run. He hadn't been able to just leave. Because if you were here, then this was a last resort. This was the place you ended up in when you were already crawling through life on your hands and knees, when you knew you didn't have enough time to fix anything the right way. 

"She's gonna be fighting tonight. First one."

The girl's shoulders tensed, and she started ripping around her jacket like she was trying to tear it apart. She was insignificant enough to change her image and go another few rounds undetected. She'd be good for a year. Maybe a year and a half. Tops. And after that, Vanessa would find a new group. That's what she did. She was a collector. And when the pieces broke, she threw them out. 

Chess just didn't want to accept that. Chess just didn't want to be another thrown out piece. 

"That's tough. The first fight," Hiro said, attention strained against a face that he'd forget the second he left the apartment. The girl brushed her hair out of her face. Her eyes were red. Blood shot. Glazed over. Hiro's chest felt heavy. 

"Let's just hope she doesn't fuck up the way you did." Kenta crashed onto the couch. "Remember?"

_I remember. _

His first fight for Vanessa had been a giant fuck-up. He'd been too eager, too cocky. They'd told him to slow down, and he hadn't wanted to listen. And he remembered seeing Chess on the other side of the battle cage, lips mouthing the same words over and over again. 

_Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. _

But his hands hadn't wanted to listen, and his head hadn't been able to make sense of the words Chess had told him right before they'd entered the arena. 

 

 _"Let me get you a few times...Get the crowd pumped up. And then slowly - slowly advance. It's like fencing, you know? Like with swords and shit or whatever the hell they...you know, use. And don't forget your face. You wanna make them think you're gonna shit your pants. You wanna make them think _ I'll  _ win no matter what. You wanna make them think they bet their money on the right guy. And that's when you go for it. You get one last hit. One. Got that? That's it. Make it look like it was beginner's luck. They won't be so tough on you then. Don't miss it. And don't fuck up, you hear? Don't you dare fuck up, or we're both dead."_

 

But Hiro hadn't been able to watch his bot being crushed by Chess. He hadn't been able to take the punches. Because every time their bots had collided, Hiro had felt the pounds beneath his skin and his bone and the memories bawling in his brain. And it had hurt. It had hurt so much. It had reminded him of everything he was trying to run away from. A place that couldn't be called home anymore. A man that couldn't be called a father anymore. 

Crushes and hits. Familiar rhythms. Foreign household. Kitchen floor. Red stained tiles. Screams. Punches. Tears. Hiding under beds. Scrambling into closets. Eyes closed. Mouth shut. Don't breathe.  

Just another normal day in a broken family. 

"Why are you looking for him anyways?" 

Hiro ripped his eyes away from the girl in the wall. Kenta had his combats perched on the headrest. He was too long for the couch, limbs oozing over the edges. 

"Wanna line?" he asked, cocking his head towards the tiny table next to him. There were crystal lines on the table, perfectly vertical between tipped over bottles and half-empty glasses. Everything in the room smelled like a bad high, the corrupt kind, the kind that made you shake for days on end. And Hiro remembered how he'd always liked those the most. Because they made him feel like they were nothing, like they could get even worse, and he knew for sure they wouldn't scare him. Like he was immune. And wasn't that the most powerful you could feel? Staring a nightmare straight in the eye and knowing it couldn't show you anything you hadn't seen already. 

Hiro nodded. And then he stopped nodding. 

What the fuck was he doing? 

He was done with this. He was done with everything down here. This was behind him. 

And yet, here he was looking for Chess. He hated Chess. Wasn't he supposed to hate Chess? Wasn't he supposed to be happy Chess wasn't there anymore? Wasn't he supposed to be anywhere else but here?

Hiro didn't know why he couldn't breathe or why the space between his ribcage felt like something that could fracture any second. 

And then he looked up, and all he could see was the zombie ceiling. The ceiling he'd stared at so many times before. The ceiling that made the stars scream louder. The ceiling that had made him feel like blasting off and never looking back. 

And he pretended like he could see through the mold and the neon lightbulbs, through story after story, through the roof, through the hemisphere. And she was looking down, and he could see her, and she was saying it again, familiar words she'd whispered into his ears when he'd tried to make her leave it all behind. 

 

 _"Caring is a strange thing. It makes us do strange things." _

✦

 

"Hiro, look - I just said I'd move the board to the left."

"I know what you said. I heard it the last billion times you said it!"

"I said it twice."

"Five times. And I got it. Jesus."

"I just meant - "

"Stop. I got it. Loud and clear."

"I'm just trying to help."

"I know you're trying to help, but just - just give me some goddamned fucking space! You promised you'd let me do this!"

"Hiro! Listen to me. It's not going to work if you put it on the right. It's going to tear everything apart, and then you'll have to start from the beginning!"

"There's a 26 percent chance the location won't interfere! And I was taking a chance. Just - fucking - let me do this!"

"I was just trying to help! Stop being so hard-headed!" 

Everything Tadashi had said to him today had felt like a punch. Tadashi was beating the crap out of him. And all he was doing - was talking. Hiro wanted him to stop. He wanted him to leave him alone. But the thought of Tadashi leaving, just made him grip everything so much tighter. Hiro was holding a project board in his hands, and his palms were sweaty, and his fingers were white, and he wanted it to fucking crumble. The project board. The world. Fuck.

Tadashi's cheeks were smudged red, and the color was leaking across the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears. His hair looked like it was searing straight through his scalp. 

Lukewarm to nuclear in a heartbeat. 

"I'm hard-headed? You're the one who won't leave it alone!"

"You want me to leave it alone? Fine. I'm leaving it alone," Tadashi said so loud the lines in his neck started to bulge. And before Hiro even had a chance to shout back, Tadashi turned and trampled up the flight of stairs. Hiro swore he could see rubber marks burning away the concrete. 

The door shuddered. The air went cold. Hiro's head was so, so loud again. 

He was gone. He'd just left. He hadn't even waited for Hiro to say anything, to say 'stop' or 'I'm so fucking sorry for being the biggest idiot of all time' - or 'please, please don't give up on me too early'.

It was so much easier being mean to Tadashi than being nice. Hiro was all backwards. He didn't have to think so much when he was angry. He didn't have to think about the consequences. They'd be bad anyways. Being nice was a whole other universe. The consequences of being nice were terrifying. 

Terrifying overtrumped bad by a gazillion. 

Hiro slumped back into the chair. It squeaked. Hiro wanted to claw it to shreds. He stared down at his chewed off fingernails. Clawing anything open would be a desperate attempt at failure. He groaned and dug his fingers into his eyeballs.

He always had to be the bigger asshole. The screwed up, little asshole with anger management issues. 

Hiro flung the project board against the nearest wall. It descended to the floor perfectly intact. The right way round and everything.  It was mocking him. 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid.  _

He hated this. He hated his brain. It was like it was trying to interfere with this dream, with the spectrum, with his perfect fucking high. 

Hiro was so good at letting the monsters in his brain eat him from the inside-out. And it just happened so quickly he couldn't stop it in time. He couldn't keep them from coming back and chewing away at all the good things he'd set up. They came again and again and again. They wrecked and shattered and bawled. They tore down the fundament of everything he'd wanted to build, leaving him in rubbles and the need to start all over again.

Hiro stared at his fingers. 

Bruised. Scratched. Scarred. Rough patches and shabby corners. His mom used to say he had the hands of a worker. Hands that built. Hands that fixed. Hands that made a difference.

Hiro had done horrible things with his hands, things he could never be proud of. But there were moments where they could do good, too. Hiro wondered when he'd get tired of starting from scratch. He wondered when thinking of spectrum-smiles and warm words wouldn't be enough for him to want to start again. But he wasn't tired enough. He wasn't done with this. He didn't want to be. 

Hiro had the hands of a worker. Hiro had hands, and they were worth something. And with these hands, Hiro wanted to run up to the cafe and take Tadashi's hands and tell him that they were going to leave the world behind. He wanted to run until they reached a place where nobody would ever find them. 

With these hands, Hiro wanted to take Tadashi to the ends of the earth. 

Hiro ran out of the garage. He ran like a maniac.

 

 

"Come with me." Hiro was so out of breath his words didn't even sound like words.

Tadashi's head snapped up from where it had been leaning over his notepad. The woman at the table stared at Hiro like he was crazy - which he was. Hiro was crazy. 

Tadashi looked at him as if he wasn't sure if Hiro was actually Hiro. Because Hiro was crazy now.

And then Tadashi's eyebrows crumpled upwards, and his eyes looked like daggers. It was some weird mixture of hurt and anger, and Hiro hated both of it so much. He wanted to get rid of it. With his hands. With his smiles. Tadashi's face wasn't made for bad things. Tadashi's face was made for basking in sunbeams and catching southward breezes. 

"Excuse me? My order?" The woman cocked her head upward. Hiro wanted to smack her in the face. 

"Come with me," he said again - because that's all he could find in his brain. That's all he could understand. Everything else was hazy, intangible, not important enough. Tadashi was standing right in front of him, but he was taking up all the space in Hiro's head, and Hiro wanted to keep him there. Hiro wanted him to stay. 

Tadashi looked at the woman, then back at Hiro, then back at the woman. 

"Latte Macchiato. Anything else?" His smile was back. It didn't look the way it was supposed to. Everything in it was missing. 

Hiro squeezed himself in front of the table. His chest was one notepad away from Tadashi's. His skin was humming like that second after a band stopped playing, and the crowd was quiet for half a beat, and all you could hear was the pressure in your lungs and your blood feeding your brain. "Tadashi, please I -"

"A scone," the woman said. God, Hiro wanted her to shut up. "Also, one of those blueberry cupca-"

"Leo!" Hiro shouted. The whole entire cafe went quiet. Hiro could feel the adrenaline in his ear drums. It felt like he was jumping out of a plane without knowing if his parachute was functioning. It felt like he was in a shark cage with an open wound. It felt like he was taking a step on Mars with a crack in his helmet.

Everybody was staring. Everybody could see him. Hiro didn't even have enough time to hide his face behind his hair. And he didn't care. He was visible. In full view. He didn't fucking care. 

Leo popped out from under the counter. His eyes were huge. "Hiro?"

"Tadashi's getting off early," Hiro said so fast it was gibberish. He took Tadashi's hand. But he was still holding his pen, and he wouldn't let it go, and the tip was digging its way into Hiro's palm. 

This was the most awkward getaway of all time.  

"Hey, whoa, what?" Leo whipped his head to the side, eyes still bigger than the Pacific Ocean.

"Hiro, let go." Tadashi wasn't even looking at him. And Hiro didn't give himself enough time to figure out what he was looking at. He needed them out of here. His thoughts were coming back, and he couldn't fend them off for long. They were seconds away from breaking through the barricades. 

"No," Hiro said, and he gripped Tadashi's hand tighter. He pulled. He hoped Tadashi wasn't as heavy as he looked like. 

"Hiro, look just - "

Hiro pulled harder, and Tadashi stumbled into his steps. He was in the process of kidnapping Tadashi Matsuno. 

Tadashi fucking Matsuno. 

"Hiro, let go!"

_ I don't want to let go. Don't you fucking get that? I don't want to let you go, you idiot! _

Hiro made it to the door, and he shoved it open with his shoulder. 

"Bring him back by nine! Oh, and don't forget prote -" But Leo's words were cut off by the door slamming behind their backs and the buzz of the rush hour. 

Hiro was crazy. 

 

It still looked exactly the same. Hiro didn't know why he'd thought it would've changed. The observatory was a place where time stood still. It was in a separate dimension, a place where the stars were closer, a place where you could hear the galaxy breathing.

Hiro hadn't thought about whether or not it was a good idea to bring him here. But he couldn't think way down there, in the city, between all those foreign faces. Up here, he could breathe. His head was clear. Not empty. Just clear. Like the folds in his brain curled in a cleaner way. Like everything just took on a structure that lasted long enough for him to feel logical on the inside. Not crazy. Then again, maybe he was still a little crazy. 

They'd taken the tram. They'd walked. They hadn't looked at each other because it had been too bright. And Hiro realized that there were so many lights down there that you couldn't even see past the city and into the sky. Not the way you could up here. It was like you were breaking through a barrier, and all that was left now was this. 

An uncorrupted view of the universe.

Tadashi had his hands dug into the pockets of his jeans, shoulders tugged up, the air puffing out of his mouth like fog. The tip of his nose was red, and the color leaked into his cheeks and the curve of his chin. Hiro wanted to rub his hands along the discolorations, watch the stains darken and retreat. He wanted to touch Tadashi so badly. He wanted the distance between them to disappear - and the silence. It felt like they were mute. Being quiet was worse than being mute. Mute was thicker, subdued, like someone was sitting on top of your chest and your throat, and you wanted to say so much, but you couldn't. You physically couldn't. 

Tadashi was looking at his feet. Hiro was looking at Tadashi. And then he stopped and looked at his feet, too. He watched his sneakers take one step at a time. Until they almost bumped against Tadashi's minty ones. 

Hiro sat down on the slope that led into the toy town San Fransokyo. The grass was damp between his fingertips, the cold seeping into his skin. Tadashi sat down next to him. Hiro tugged his legs against his stomach and pressed his chin into the space between his kneecaps. Tadashi leaned back onto his arms and spread his legs out. Crossed at the ankles. 

They stayed like this. They watched. They waited. 

Hiro laid down, and he tried to count the bright dots above their heads. It was clear enough to see Aries, a small constellation bounded by Taurus and Pisces and Cetus. Hiro traced the invisible lines with his eyes, pretending like he could see the ram plow its horns into the hemisphere. He lost himself in between the network, tales and creatures coming to life just for him, disappearing before he could grasp what they were trying to tell him. Hiro forgot the rest of the world for a while. He forgot about Tadashi sitting only inches away. He forgot about San Fransokyo bawling a million miles below their feet. He forgot everything. 

Until he remembered. 

Tadashi was holding his hand. Strong. Secure. And maybe linked fingers could keep Hiro from falling into the sky. Or maybe that wouldn't do, and the sky would pull Hiro away. He'd take Tadashi with him. They'd fall into the stars together. 

_ Up, up and away. _

Tadashi was looking at him. Hiro wondered for how long. He was almost angry for missing it. He wanted to look at Tadashi when Tadashi looked at him. 

"I'm sorry," Tadashi said, and Hiro felt so guilty for not being the one to have said it first. He'd wanted to be the one to break the mute blackout. He'd wanted to be the one to take Tadashi's hand. He'd wanted to be the one caught staring. He'd wanted to do it all first. Because - just because. He couldn't find a reason. Maybe it just felt good to hold, to carry, to smile for someone who couldn't. Hiro couldn't help but think about that night in Tadashi's room, the night where he'd found the picture of his parents and the shadows in his face. 

Tadashi lied down, and he leaned in a little closer. Tadashi's breath was warm. It was the perfect temperature. Mild. Pleasant. Hiro wanted to dive into his lungs. 

"I don't like it when you do that," Hiro said, and he said it as quietly as possible. He didn't want their breaths to mix. Maybe it would get too warm or too cold. Right now was the perfect temperature. 

"Do what?" Tadashi asked. 

"Apologize so much."

Tadashi's chest twitched. His face scrunched up. "Cass says that all the time."

"To stop apologizing for things that aren't your fault?"

Tadashi looked down at their hands. Hiro didn't want to. If he did, he probably wouldn't be able to pay attention to anything else. 

"You don't have to apologize. It's okay to just...let it be sometimes."

"But - I mean, it was my fault. I was doing it again. Trying to do it all for you."

"You were just trying to help. I'm sorry, okay? I am. I was too busy being an asshole."

"You're not an - " Tadashi swallowed. "Asshole," he whispered like he wanted nobody to hear. 

_I am. _

The grass tickled his scalp. The world smelled earthy and damp, and Hiro swore he could smell the remnants of coffee ground. He scooted a little closer, just enough for their shoulders and their arms to touch, just enough for Tadashi to grip his fingers tighter. 

"I can't deal with - you know - people helping," Hiro said. 

_ I want to do everything by myself. I need to. And sometimes, I'm so tired of it. So, so fucking tired.   _

Tadashi pulled Hiro's hand onto his chest. Hiro could feel his heartbeat beneath his knuckles. It was a gentle thing, something that made him want to fall asleep. Tadashi's heartbeat was a bedtime story, a lullaby, a dreamcatcher dangling above familiar sheets.

"Well, I can't deal with -  _not_ helping," Tadashi said. He huffed out a tiny laugh. "It's bad. I know how bad it is." He shifted, and he pressed Hiro's hand further into his chest. Hiro wanted it to stay there forever. 

"In third grade...Fred asked me if he could copy my homework. I remember saying that - that if we had the same answers, the teacher would find out. So...I said I'd help make a set of different answers. I ended up doing his homework - for a year, I think. It got so bad. I wouldn't let him do it. Even when he told me to stop. I handed his homework in before he even had a chance to hand in _his._ I was obsessed. It was horrible! Eventually, he punched me in the face. I stopped after that. We're on better terms now."

Tadashi was smiling. His eyes were closed. 

And Hiro couldn't help but laugh a little. It was small enough for the wind to pluck it out of his mouth and carry it away. 

Tadashi opened his eyes, and he turned his head, and he was looking at him - and Hiro couldn't deal with his face so close. He curled up against Tadashi's side, and he pressed the slope of his nose into his shoulder. This was good. He didn't have to look at him like this. Hiro smiled. Tadashi gripped his hand so tight it hurt. Maybe he knew what Hiro's face was doing. 

He let the smile grow a little more. 

"You were a crazy third grader," he mumbled into Tadashi's shoulder. 

"Tell me about it. Cuckoo crazy."

"I don't mind." 

"You say that now. Beneath all this - " Tadashi tapped their hands against his chest. "There's a loony. You'd leave if you met him."

"The loony?"

"Yeah."

"If you're secretly a loony, then I'm a secretly a nut-job."

"Our secret identities should meet up sometime."

"It's a date."

"Cool."

Hiro held his breath and counted the throbs in Tadashi's chest. He wouldn't mind counting to a million. 

"So..." Tadashi nudged his shoulder against Hiro's nose. "Is this where you come to - you know, be alone?"

Hiro shook his head. "I - I haven't been here in a while. I was kidnapping you without a plan." Tadashi snorted. Hiro nudged his nose further into the material of his jacket. Laundry detergent. "So I just...brought you here." Tadashi's snorts turned into blips of laughter. Because, yeah - the thought of Hiro kidnapping anybody was borderline comical. But he didn't mind. If that made Tadashi laugh, he didn't mind. Tadashi's laughter turned Hiro's muscles into string quartets. Tiny symphonies beneath his skin. 

"I like it up here," Tadashi said. "It's quiet." 

"It's _magic_ ,"  Hiro said. 

"Yeah...It's magic." 

He was sure Tadashi's smile was so big his face was glowing. Hiro didn't have to have his eyes open to know. He could hear it in his voice, in the grip of his fingers, in the tip of his shoulder blade. 

"My mom - " Hiro started. He stopped. Tadashi gripped Hiro's hand stronger like he was making sure he wouldn't fall. Hiro gripped Tadashi's hand stronger like he was making sure he wouldn't let go. "My mom - " Hiro remembered to breathe. "My mom was an astrophysicist. She used to bring me here all the time." It was barely a whisper. It was like Hiro was afraid of scaring something off. "Up here, it's like you're close enough to touch all of it." He lifted his free arm and let his fingers reach for the constellations. He smiled as he watched them weave themselves into the network of flickers and tales. 

"Explains a lot," Tadashi said. Hiro let his hand fall back onto the grass. "I used to think you stared at ceilings when you thought really hard." 

Hiro scrunched his eyebrows. 

"You know...like in cartoons," Tadashi continued. "They always scratch their nose - or something, and then they look up."

"What kind of cartoons did you watch?"

"What kind of cartoons did  _you_ watch?" 

Hiro felt Tadashi jab a finger into his scalp. He looked up. Tadashi's eyes were tired. Woodland at dawn. Right before the sun went to sleep. 

"You look at the sky," Tadashi said. "But - only when it's dark out. At night. It's like you're staring through ceilings - and looking at the stars." Tadashi's eyes flicked up. Hiro's eyes followed suit. 

"It's kind of - I don't know...It's like you don't let ceilings stand in your way. It's like you're closer to all of that...up there. Closer than anybody else. It's like you can have conversations with the night sky."

Tadashi could make anything sound like it was out of this world. 

"What's it saying right now?" Tadashi asked. 

Hiro closed his eyes. He held his breath. He smiled. He listened. "Everything," he said. "Everything at once."

Tadashi pressed their hands further into his chest. His heartbeat was a harmony. His heartbeat made Hiro want to empty his lungs. Let it all out. Unapologetically. And maybe he'd get away with telling Tadashi all of his secrets, all the little things nibbling at the structures in his head. Maybe just for now. Maybe just for here. 

"Sometimes...Sometimes, I miss her so much I feel like stopping," Hiro said. He counted the heartbeats to 10. The rhythm had toned down to a doze. Maybe Tadashi didn't know what he was talking about. Maybe he wasn't even really listening. Maybe Hiro wasn't even really listening. He was just letting his lungs take over. "Stopping...Just stopping...Just standing still to let everything else pass. Giving up in the worst way possible. Knowing that like - everything else keeps going while you can't." Hiro swallowed. The clumps in his throat stayed. 

"I know," Tadashi said. "Sometimes..." Hiro could hear him breathe. It was heavier now like he was trying to force something out of his insides. "Sometimes, I feel the same. Maybe even worse."

Hiro hadn't known what it was going to feel like. Being honest. Baring parts of yourself that you couldn't even look at when you looked at yourself in the mirror. Whatever he'd once thought it was going to feel like, it didn't feel better, and it didn't feel worse. It felt different. Being honest was opening up your chest to let someone see what was inside. Being honest was giving someone a piece of a truth you barely understood. Being honest was brushing your hair out of your face, tugging your fingers out of your sweater, standing as tall as you could - when all you wanted to do was go back into hiding. 

"You know - " Hiro started. He shifted a little closer. 

"Yeah?" Tadashi squeezed their fingers once. Holding Tadashi's hand was like holding an oath, a promise that chained two things to each other. Like the gravitational pull between binary stars.

"I...I wouldn't leave." Hiro cleared his throat. Tadashi's hand went slack. "About you being a loony. I mean, you said if I found out, I'd leave. I wouldn't. I - I won't. Leave. I won't. And like - I mean, I don't know if that's gonna change tomorrow...or in a week. But now - I mean - " Hiro could feel Tadashi shift and turn. Hiro opened his eyes. Their foreheads bumped. Their knees bumped. 

"I mean, for now...I won't leave," Hiro said. 

Their hands were trying to asphyxiate each other. 

"Me neither," Tadashi said, and he was so close all Hiro could see was a blurry landscape of flushed skin and amber puddles. 

"Me neither," Tadashi said again. Or maybe Hiro had just imagined him saying it again. He wanted Tadashi to say it until his throat was raw, and he lost his voice, and Hiro had to read his lips like he was deaf. 

_Me neither. _

And Hiro didn't feel like himself. Not the self he'd gotten used to. This was a version of what he could be. And the person in front of him was a version of what Tadashi could be. Like this, they were versions of something that felt intangible anywhere else but here. 

Here, they were on the exact same wavelength. Always were. Always had been. They were the same like two reflections without a mirror. They were carbon copies, two people living, breathing to the same rhythms. There was no up or down. There was no back or forth. There was just this. Just them. 

Tadashi and Hiro.

Hiro and Tadashi.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, but school's butchering me. I want my bed. So bad.  
> I hope you guys don't mind the mysteries (and the roller coaster of feels) I just love secret backstories. This one's pretty dark. Honestly, it wasn't planned (none of this was), but I'm trying to roll with all the horrible things my brain is throwing at me. Wheeeee...  
> I felt like the BH6 squad would look like a caricature to Hiro (generally, everybody he meets is a caricature through his eyes). And I mean...we all know Fred's the stoniest of all stoners. He's my spirit animal.  
> Also, I feel like when nobody's around Hiro and Tadashi have the most stupidly adorable conversations <3  
> Have a beautiful day! And happy 4th of July! Greetings from a dork in Germany :)


	5. Chapter 5

It was strange seeing Tadashi outside of the cafe. No apron wrapped around his waist. No notepad in his big hands.  It was strange because that was who Tadashi was to Hiro.

Coffee. Pastel. The Beatles. Warm burrows. 

And now, Tadashi was leaning over a bar table holding a beer in his hand, and it was the strangest thing Hiro had ever seen. 

This was Tadashi with nothing else in the way. This was Tadashi. Just Tadashi. Tadashi without Hiro's dream. Tadashi without the Lucky Cat Cafe. Tadashi without Cass or Leo or The Table. Tadashi without his garage. Tadashi without his moon room. 

And he looked like a piece that had been ripped out of a portrait and stapled against the facade of the real world. With sounds and smells and things that moved. He was still so warm, still part of something safe and sound, lines still marked by the same color scheme, shapes and configurations still as smooth. Warm hollows. Melting curves. Tadashi could be anywhere in the world, and he would always be lukewarm. 

A weight rammed Hiro's shoulder. He hurled himself back into reality. 

"Watch it," a voice grumbled as Hiro squeezed himself through the groups of people and mile-high tables and barstools. He whipped his head back to the bar. Tadashi was gone. Great. 

It had taken him every ounce of strength not to run away the second he'd stepped into this place. It couldn't be called a 'Bar'. This was the Buckingham Palace of all bars. It was too clean, too controlled. Too nice. Hiro thought bars should be more rugged. There should be sharpie memoirs etched into crumbling tapestry. There should be bottles on the floor, paper napkins drowning in dirty puddles, rubber soles etched into all of the cracks. Bars were supposed to be a full-time abstract concept. 

This place smelled like peach juice. 

Hiro kept his head low, eyes strained against his shoes. At least, his shoes looked the way shoes were supposed to look like in real bars. 

"Hi."

Hiro tensed up. There was this familiar warmth seeping into his spine. He didn't have to turn to find out why. 

"You made it." 

Hiro looked up, pressing his head so far back his scalp bumped against Tadashi's chest. 

"Hi," he said. Tadashi's face was almost upside-down. But that's what Tadashi did. He turned everything upside-down. Inside-out. Front to back. Back to front. 

Everything was topsy-turvy.  

"Hi," Tadashi said. His breath smelled sour. Like beer. That's what your breath was supposed to smell like in a real bar. 

Hiro smiled. He turned around. But he didn't back away. 

"Hi," he said again. 

Tadashi snorted. "Hi," he said. 

Hiro was about to say it again when Tadashi's smile widened. Hiro smiled right back. And he wished they could stay like this, just make the world stop and memorize each flex of their mouths, touch their muscles with their fingertips, read their smiles like braille. Hiro was starting a collection. A collection of Tadashi Matsuno's smiles. Maybe he could flip through them on rainy days, on dark days where he needed the sun the most. 

Tadashi's smile turned into a grin. All big and bedazzling. Hiro filed it under 'Big and Bedazzling', right next to the 'Barely Even There' smile and the 'Defying Gravity' smile, the one that pulled Tadashi's entire face towards the sky. 

Hiro already knew that this was going to be the greatest collection of all time. Better than Cass' The Beatles Box Set. Way better. 

"Oh my god, Hiro!" Nothing but wind chimes. 

Honey-Lemon's pink painted fingernails curled their way into Tadashi's arms. She shoved him to the side and took his place so fast Hiro didn't even have time to blink. She smelled like the Cosmetic's aisles in malls. She looked like them, too. Pretty. Painted on.  

"You have the most amazing smile on this freaking planet!" she squealed. Hiro's shoulders tensed. It felt like his face had followed suit. Honey-Lemon's cheeks were flushed, and her breath was practically Cosmo. Definitely drunk. Super drunk. She wasn't wearing her glasses either.

Honey-Lemon bent down and pulled him close, so close their noses almost bumped. 

"I need your smile on my Instagram," she whispered so loud it couldn't be considered a whisper. Hiro couldn't help but crumple his face together. Nobody should want to have his smile on their Instagram. Nobody should want to have his smile anywhere. Period. 

"Honey, come on. Back off." Tadashi tugged her away by the shoulders. He looked like he was having the fucking time of his life. The asshole. 

"But - but I mean -  _ look at it, Tadashi._" Honey spread both hands out, fanning her fingers around Hiro's face like a fortune-teller playing around with a crystal ball. 

She was drunk. Definitely drunk. Super drunk. 

"Look at it," she said. And she didn't need her glasses for her eyes to look like they belonged to an insect. A spindly, drunk insect with pink fingernails.

"Hiro, no! Bring it back! Tadashi. I swear to god. It's so amazing."

Tadashi's smile went small. Barely even there. And he was looking at Hiro in a way that made his chest want to pang. 

"Yeah," Tadashi said. "I know."

_ Pang.  _

Hiro felt like throwing up. 

Honey was toppling over like she wouldn't be able to keep herself on her feet if Tadashi weren't there to keep her steady.  Hiro felt like toppling over, too. He felt like smacking his face into the squeaky clean floor, and then maybe it would be so kind as to crack open and let him fall into every bottomless void beneath. 

"Come on, gotta show the others. You know, you should totally cut your hair…get it out of your face and everything," Honey-Lemon slurred, flailing her arms around like her bones were nothing but goo. She ripped her shoulders out of their confinements, leaving Tadashi's head all crooked. Honey cackled. There was glitter everywhere. 

She grabbed Hiro's wrist and pulled him through the crowd gathered beneath the light bulbs dangling from the ceiling. Hiro felt like touching them. They looked like stars. 

Honey ripped him towards a small booth next to a makeshift stage made out of pallets. There was a girl sitting on a barstool, plucking at the strings of her guitar and singing pleasant harmonies. Hiro thought they were a little too pleasant. Like Christian camp songs. 

"Ta- _ dah _ !" Honey-Lemon stumbled to the side and spread her arms wide, gesturing towards Hiro like he was part of her show-and-tell. The others narrowed their eyes. But Gogo always had her eyes narrowed. Hiro wasn't really sure if they were narrowed a little more than usual. But they were narrow. And scary. 

Honey started waving jazz hands. Fred flung his beanie into her face. It got stuck in her hair. She giggled. She left the beanie right where it was. 

"Hey, Hiro. Sorry. She's had one too many," Wasabi said from where he was slurping some color explosion in a cocktail glass. 

"Stop drinking my happy juice!" Honey said, ripping the beanie from her face and throwing it at Wasabi. It slumped onto his shoulder. 

"You shouldn't be drinking anymore! Besides…" Wasabi's eyes strained against the cocktail. "This tastes like sunshine. It's mine now."

Fred snatched the beanie and perched it onto his dreads. Wasabi looked like Bob Marley on steroids - and happy juice. 

"Cool, bro," Fred singsonged. Gogo rolled her eyes and slumped further into the leather seat. Arms crossed. One cheek puffed. 

Hiro wasn't sure if any of this was actually real. 

"Okay, come on, Honey. Sit." Tadashi appeared around the corner, his smile still perfectly intact. 

Honey squeezed her way into the booth. She wrapped her arms around Gogo's neck. And Gogo's eyes didn't look so scary now, with her cheeks stained red and her eyebrows arched a little less. They were bigger than before, wide enough for Hiro to really get a good look. He liked her eyes, they way he liked the feeling of those cold nights that made you want to give into hazards and thrills. Gasoline. Combats flicking engines into overdrive. 

Hiro smiled. Gogo rolled her eyes. Her really cool eyes. 

"Scoot," Tadashi said as he steered Hiro towards the free space next to Fred. Fred squashed himself further against Wasabi, patting both of his hands on the free spot. Hiro sat down. He tugged his shoulders towards his stomach. Trying to take up the as little space as possible was something he did without thinking. Bad habit. Hiro was a compilation of bad habits. 

Tadashi slipped in next to Honey. Now, there was nothing but a table between their chests. Hiro leaned forward. Tadashi leaned forward. Their knees bumped. Hiro spread his mouth wide. Tadashi coughed out a laugh. His cough-laughs were just as spectacular as his snorts. 

"I told you, it's amazing," Honey whispered. Hiro whipped his head around, face glitching up. 

"Oh my god, no," Honey slurred. 

Hiro scrunched his face so much his muscles hurt. 

"Hiro, you're horrible." Honey bent over the table to slap a hand on his head. 

"Horrible!" She grumbled. Tadashi started laughing. Really laughing. The kind of laughing that made the spaces beneath Hiro's skin turn into orchestras. Layers upon layers of strings and wholesome harmonies. Tadashi laughed louder. Hiro smiled wider. And now, Hiro didn't mind the Christian camp song music or the squeaky clean floor or the fact that he was smiling with his hair out of his face and his fingers free from his sweater. It felt good. All of this just felt so, so good. 

Hiro couldn't concentrate on the happenings at the table. His head was preoccupied. His hands, too. They were tucked under the table, fingers woven into other fingers. Warmer fingers. Familiar fingers. It was like they were trying to touch each corner of their hands, memorizing, learning, hoping that in the end nothing would be left unexplored. Hiro liked running his fingertips along the ridges of Tadashi's knuckles. They were like tiny mountain ranges, smooth and soft curves. Tadashi kept pressing his fingernails into the heartlines of Hiro's palm, running along the patterns like he was painting a network. And Hiro liked Tadashi's face like this the most. Eyelids dropping. Mouth small. It was like he was going to fall asleep any second and never wake up. 

Hiro scratched a nail along the curve of a knuckle. The base of Tadashi's throat twitched. 

Hiro had tried to go to the toilet for the past hour, but Tadashi hadn't wanted to let go. And Hiro hadn't wanted to leave. Hiro kept tugging, and Tadashi kept pulling. Their fingers were knotted. Figure-Eight-Follow-Through. The kind of knot climbers used to reach the peaks of mountains and monuments and clouds. 

Hiro never wanted their ropes to loosen. 

"Can someone ask these people to play some real music?" 

Hiro blinked. He ripped his eyes away from Tadashi's grin. From his mouth. From the indents in his skin, right where the edges of his smile met his cheeks. Dimples. Jesus fucking Christ. 

"I feel like I'm in church," Gogo huffed. Hiro lifted an eyebrow. He couldn't hold back a bark-laugh. 

"You've never been to church," Honey mumbled from where she was slumped against Gogo's shoulder. It looked a little uncomfortable, with Honey being too long and Gogo being too short. Honey-Lemon was practically a drunk noodle. 

"I'm pretty sure I'd get bored off my ass," Gogo said. 

"How could you be so sure?" Honey squished her fingers into the other girl's cheeks. Gogo looked like she was holding back hellish fury - and the need to chomp on Honey's fingers. 

"It's about praying to a bearded man stalking mankind from space. I think I can be pretty fucking sure." Gogo folded her arms in front of her chest, eyes shooting death-ray beams towards the girl strumming away on her guitar.

"Speaking of boredom and asses…Let's play a game!"Fred slammed his fist onto the table. The bottles vibrated. 

"Drinking game!"Honey-Lemon squealed, and she tugged Gogo so close it was like she was trying to swallow her with nothing but her arms. 

"Honey, I don't think you should be playing," Wasabi said, pointing at the other girl with a rainbow striped straw. Honey's sticky lips curled into a frown. "Get her some OJ or something."

"Do people still say OJ?" Tadashi asked. He was still painting networks into Hiro's palms. 

"I do," Wasabi said before shrugging his shoulders and sticking the straw behind one of his ears. "Hiro, what's your poison?"

"Oh my god, what are you saying?" Honey groaned. 

"What. It's a cool thing to say!" 

"No, it's not."

"Hiro?"

"Hm?"

Someone had thrown a crumpled napkin against his forehead. Hiro gripped Tadashi's fingers tighter. Tadashi was still grinning like an idiot. 

"Poison?" Wasabi asked, head cocked to the side.

"He means alcohol," Gogo said, and her eyes were doing that thing where they were rolling but not really. Half-a-roll. Half a rollercoaster looping. Gogo had really cool eyes.

Hiro shook his head. He looked over at Tadashi. 

"Oh. No…uh -" He cleared his throat. "I'm good."

"You sure?"

Hiro nodded. 

Tadashi's head went crooked. 

Hiro was a lightweight.

"Yeah," Hiro said. 

Tadashi's smile went small, and Hiro wanted to tug at the corner's of his mouth and just taste all of it. Tadashi's giant smiles. 

"Yeah, I'm sure," Hiro said again.  

He was the worst lightweight of all time. 

"Okay…" Honey twisted the word into a question. Hiro ripped his eyes away from Tadashi's mouth. 

"Oh, I know! Let's talk firsts!" Honey wiggled her arms into the air. 

"What?" Gogo's eyes shrunk back into slits. 

"Like, who was your first kiss?" Honey asked. 

"Where are we? A third-grade slumber party?"

"Come on, Gogo!" Honey pouted. She looked like a sad golden retriever. "Our slumber parties were the greatest!" She wrapped her arms around Gogo's neck. "Let's re-live the past, strengthen our emotional bond through reincarnating our adventurous history."

"Watching Star Wars wasn't adventurous," Gogo huffed, trying to rip Honey's noodle arms from her throat. 

"You did not just say that." Wasabi was back to pointing his rainbow straw. 

"What?"

"Star Wars  _is_ adventure," Wasabi said, practically rising out of his booth. He raised his arm like he was announcing a fencing battle. A fencing battle with a rainbow straw. Gogo's eyes were so narrowed they were practically closed. 

"Okay," Honey shouted. She threw herself onto the table, half-empty glasses and bottles tipping over the edge. Gogo ripped her back into their side of the booth. There was a giant puddle drenching Honey's yellow sweater. "Fred," she started. "First kiss!"

Gogo groaned from where she was trying to rub the stain from Honey's sweater with a fistful of napkins and drink coasters. 

"Uh…" Fred stared at the lightbulbs dangling above the booth. "My mom. And then…like…my mom…and my dad. Maybe Heathcliff. Like once."

"Ew." Honey giggled. "No, I mean - like -"

"Oh, like Terry Kruger?" Fred tapped a short rhythm against the edge of the table. The group went quiet. Wasabi's eyes looked like they were ready to plop out of his head. 

"Wait, you kissed Terry Krueger!?" Honey shoved Gogo off of her sweater. Fred snatched his beanie from Wasabi's dreads and mushed it over his own head. It slumped to the left. 

"Uh, yeah. No. Actually, I sort of just fell on her…with my mouth. She chipped a tooth or something. It was magical."

Honey groaned. She grabbed the mess of napkins from her lap and flung them across the table. 

"Wasabi had a crush on Terry," Gogo said. 

"What? Did not." Wasabi shifted in his seat. He crossed his arms.

"Did too."

"She had weird teeth," Wasabi said. 

"She had fantastic _boobs_ , " Fred shouted. The girl with the guitar gave them a pointed look. Tadashi mouthed a 'sorry'. 

"Where do your priorities lie, dude?" Fred continued. 

"With teeth."

"I worry about you, like, all the time."

"Thank you, Fred."

"You're super welcome."

"Okay, first times!" Honey-Lemon bursted into bubbly laughter. Gogo smacked her hands against her ears. 

"Seriously, Honey?"

"Yeah, and then first heartbreak. Come on, I want to know. You know you wanna know."

"I don't."

"Oh…You're blushing, Gogo."

"Stop touching me."

"So totally blushing!"

"Don't you dare."

Honey kept squealing. Gogo kept trying to scramble out of the booth. Fred and Wasabi had ended up fencing with their straws. Tadashi was in the process of disassembling Hiro's hands and melting each piece away. 

It didn't take long for him to retreat into his head. It never took long, and he just slipped back, curled into his skin, let the folds of his brain tuck him in. Tadashi's hands were the only things keeping him in place, moored buoys standing between him and the tides. Hiro stared down at the puddle seeping into the cracks of the table and into the mesh of Honey-Lemon's sweater. The stain looked like a whale. A very distorted, chubby whale - but a whale. 

Hiro's first kiss had been a disaster. All saliva and stupid teeth and clumsy noses. He hadn't known what to do with his hands. He hadn't known what to do with his face either. Like, weren't you supposed to scrunch up your eyebrows and make it look like you were making out during day one of an apocalypse? He hadn't been able to stop thinking about his math homework. It was like his head had wanted to take him anywhere else but right in front of Sasha Kiona's face, between her teeth, inside of her mouth. Way too much saliva. Like he'd been under water holding his breath. Sex had been worse. Sex had been like drowning. And it had just gotten worse when he'd finally decided to try it with his face pressed into pillows, callused hands crushing his spine and forcing his chest into mattresses. Sex with men. Worse. Rugged. Rough. Aching. And maybe getting your heart broken by them was just as painful as it sounded like. When you broke something, you had to mend it in a way that kept it functioning. Sometimes, to full capability. Sometimes, just barely.  But the signs stayed. Leftovers you couldn't get rid of. The last scraps. Cracks and fractures and crooked indents.  

If Hiro were to rip his chest open, there'd be nothing but this ugly thing sputtering around in his rib cage. Barely functioning. Barely alive. 

Hiro ripped his fingers out of Tadashi's. Figure-Eight-Follow-Through loosened. Hiro was tumbling down mountains and monuments and clouds. He hit the floor. Hard. 

Tadashi stopped talking. He was looking at Hiro with furrowed eyebrows. Hiro swallowed. 

He wondered how many more blows his heart could take until it stopped working altogether. 

 

 

 

"You've been really quiet."

Hiro ripped himself out of his head, but it kept reeling him back in. He kept slipping away, wavering between outside and inside. Both were loud. Both were terrifying. 

Tadashi was looking at him. Someone just had to tell him his eyeballs were magic. They were so big they were practically planets - with their own orbits and moons, with enough mass to be spherical in their own gravity. 

"More quiet than usual?" Hiro asked. He stapled his eyes back to his feet, watching them take step after step. The concrete was shiny, damp with leftover rain. You could still smell it. Hiro loved the smell of rain on dry asphalt. It could warm up the cold on a night in mid-December, soften it, rub it down to something more comfortable. Hiro wished every winter night could smell like this.

"Yeah," Tadashi said. He stepped a little closer. Their shoulders bumped. "Yeah…More quiet than usual. It wasn't anything the others said, right? I mean, it was - Honey-Lemon just had one too many, and - "

"No. It's okay. Of course, it's okay. It's not that."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Hiro was nodding too fast. He hoped Tadashi didn't notice. "Yeah, I had fun."

_ I've forgotten how nice it is to have fun. Real fun.   _

Hiro rubbed his eyes, hoping that would keep them from staying closed for too long. He felt a little wrung dry. It was almost morning.

"You have really great friends," Hiro said. He wondered how often he'd already said it. But he couldn't stop saying it. He felt like stressing it, underlining it with a red felt tip pen. Tadashi had good friends. Hiro wanted to make sure Tadashi knew. Not that he didn't. He knew that he knew. 

"I mean," Hiro let a tiny smile creep onto his face, "they're practically unicorns."

"They're your unicorn friends, too."

_ I'm not supposed to have friends like that. I'm supposed to be friends with gremlins and trolls that live under bridges.  _

Hiro kept staring at his feet. He was taking smaller steps than Tadashi. Lately, their steps had always been the same. Same distance. Same rhythm. But not now. Now, they were out of synch. And Hiro didn't know if it was because they were trying too hard to make them harmonize. Or maybe it was the fact that they were trying. Maybe you weren't supposed to try with things like this. Maybe you were just supposed to let it happen. Hiro didn't know how to just let it happen. 

Thinking this much couldn't be good for anyone. It couldn't be good for him. 

"Hey, are - are you okay?" Tadashi nudged Hiro's shoulder with his shoulder. 

It hadn't sounded like an afterthought or some obligatory question. It had sounded real. Like 'Are you okay?' in terms of 'Do you have cancer?'. 

Hiro didn't have cancer. On some days - really bad days - he wished he did. 

"In general or right now?" Hiro asked. He stopped his feet from moving when they reached the cable car stop. He had to practically force them to stand still. If he didn't, he'd run. He'd run like there was no tomorrow. 

"I don't know," Tadashi said. "Both?" He stopped in the only column of lantern light that didn't sputter or twitch. It was probably the only intact lightbulb on the whole entire street. And it made him look like something out of this world, like something that had come from the sky. 

Hiro stayed in the dark. And he realized how comfortable he felt with the shadows wrapped around his arms and legs and the spaces in between. Or maybe it was more like relief. 

Hiro held his breath before saying, "In general…sometimes. Right now… I - " 

The rush of the cable car cut his words off. They whipped their heads towards the moving lights and the red lanterns dangling from the corners of the sloped roof. Hiro took a step further into the dark, but he didn't get far. Tadashi grabbed his hand. Hiro imagined that his skin was glowing right where it met Tadashi's. His warmth just leaked over everything he touched. 

"Go," Hiro said. 

_ Stay. _

"See you tomorrow?" Tadashi asked. He gripped Hiro's hand tighter. 

"'Course. Tomorrow."

_ And the day after. And the day after that. _

"Promise?"

"Maybe."

_ Promise. _

Hiro tried to untangle their fingers. Tadashi wouldn't let go. Hiro nudged his head towards the cable car. 

"You're gonna miss your ride." 

_ Please, miss your ride. _

Tadashi's eyelids twitched. "Oh, right. I - I mean, you're okay, right? Right now? I - "

"Yes."

_ I don't know. _

"Go."

_ Stay. _

"I - "

"Hey kid, get in," a voice boomed from the front of the tram. People were staring. Hiro couldn't see them. 

_ Don't get in. _

"Bye." Hiro said. It wasn't a real word. 

"Bye." Tadashi said. It wasn't a real word either. 

Tadashi let his hand go. Hiro held on until the last possible moment. 

Tadashi got in. Hiro stayed. The cable car started to move. Hiro watched him make his way to the back. And then Tadashi was standing at the back of the cable car staring after him, not even smiling, not even waving. He was just staring. Hiro knotted his fingers into each other. 

Figure-Eight-Follow-Through. 

Hiro watched the cable car pull Tadashi further and further into the night. And Hiro could feel this itch in his legs, this need to stumble after him. 

But Hiro stayed. Hiro stayed long after. Hiro stayed until the lantern lights died and the morning started to climb up the horizon. 

Hiro was a lightweight. One sip too many, and his heart told him, "I can take it one more time. I can survive another round."

 

 ✦

 

Hiro stared up at the building that melted into the facade of the cityscape. Grey bricks. Big windows. It was a place Hiro would've rushed passed if it weren't for the neon sign reaching out of the bricks. He let his eyes pan lower, staring at the soggy stickers and ripped pieces of stapled paper that covered the door beneath the sign. 

_ Saito's House of Martial Arts. _

Hiro didn't know why he thought martial arts schools were supposed to look like Xiaolin temples. He kept seeing these pictures from Japanese travel brochures, houses with curved ceilings and red pillars.

Hiro crumpled his hands into fists and dug them into the pockets of his sweater. His fingers were numb, so numb they were practically burning. It was snowing. Fingers weren't supposed to be burning at zero degrees Celsius. 

It had taken him an hour straight to get Fred to tell him where Tadashi was. Mostly because Fred kept changing the topic with government conspiracies, involving girl scout cookies and aliens and the end of the world being caused by a popsicle. And maybe the weirdest part was that Fred was covering for him. Why would Tadashi tell Cass he was at Fred's - when he was actually at Saito's House of Martial Arts? Fucking martial arts. Fucking karate chops and stuff. Tadashi wasn't capable of hurting a fly. But Hiro didn't actually know. He just wished he did. He wished he knew for sure. 

Hiro tried to take a peek through one of the big windows, but they were all too high up for him to reach. He muffled a groaned. He should've brought his board. And while he was at it, he should've brought an excuse as well. A fucking good excuse, because 'I just really needed to see you' wasn't good enough. 

'I just really needed to see you' was so pathetic it was borderline comical. That was the kind of shit people said in soap operas, the kind where the guy rips open the emergency hatch of an airplane and tuck-rolls onto earth and steals a car to drive all the way to the wedding of some woman he fell in love with a week ago. And then he just barges right in when the pastor does the whole 'speak now or forever hold your peace' part, and he punches the groom in the face and takes the bride into his arms and kisses her like he wants to eat her face. And then it starts to rain, and there's confetti and applause and a symphonic orchestra. And when he's finally done with eating her face, she looks at him, and she's crying, and she asks, 'Why are you here?', and he smiles, and he has a rose stuck between his teeth, and he says, 'I just really needed to see you.' without it sounding like gibberish. 

Hiro smashed his head against the brick wall. Sometimes, he wished his life was a soap opera. At least, he could tell the truth without feeling like the sappiest idiot of all time. Fuck.

_ Fuck. _

Maybe it was best to just go with some project related emergency. Complications with algorithms were better than the mere need to just see him, hear him, touch him and his amazing freaking hands. 

Hiro stared up at the cloudy sky. Maybe if Tadashi saw him in rain drenched clothes, he could get away with it. 

_ I just really needed to see you.  _

Hiro was by far the sappiest idiot of all time. And it wasn't even his fault. 

_ What the fuck has he done to you? _

 

 

 

The sounds got louder once Hiro stepped into the corridor. 

Hits and jabs. Meat hitting meat. 

The woman at the front desk had probably taken pity on him. 'I'm here to pick someone up' definitely hadn't sounded convincing enough. She probably knew. She'd probably read it straight from his forehead. 

_ Hi, I'm the sappiest idiot of all time. I'm here to just see him.  _

Then again, maybe he'd just been too awkward for her to deal with. The seating area was right next to her desk. Hiro was the opposite of a master of smalltalk. She'd sent him straight to the gym with nothing but a flick of her pen and a quirk of her eyebrows. 

The second door to the left was hanging loosely in its hinges, sounds bawling through the cracks and punching Hiro in the face. 

Hits and jabs. Meat hitting meat. 

The room behind the door was brightly lit. It reminded him of hospital corridors with white tubes above linoleum floors, the kind that squeaked when your sneakers were wet. And it was in the air, too, flares bleaching the particles, cleansing them in a way that made everything smell like antibacterial soap. It mixed into the sounds, into the hits and jabs and the meat hitting meat. The result was acrid. Static in his nostrils. 

Hiro looked down at the rows of kids in pairs bawling across the blue mats on the floor. The mirrors on the walls made the room feel colossal. Too many reflections. More fists. More groans. More bruises. 

Some of the kids couldn't even be called kids. Especially, the ones near the back of the room, woven between the punching bags and those rubber mannequins Hiro only knew from Bruce Lee movies. 

Those weren't kids. They were big, mean, scary. They were moving so fast he could barely see them. 

Hiro made his way for the closest corner, making sure to stay behind the stacks of gym mats. He was glad everyone was too preoccupied to notice. And so Tadashi was too preoccupied to notice. Hiro wished his eyes could just find him faster.

"Matsuno!" A voice boomed across the room. Hiro pulled his shoulders towards his ears. A reflex. An instinct. 

_ Where? _

Hiro whipped his head towards the voice - towards a man standing on the other side of the room, head held high, white robe a few sizes too big for his limbs. Hiro would've mistaken him for one of the kids if it weren't for his full-fledged beard and his monumental mountain-man-presence. Hiro would've never expected such a small body to create such a big sound. He looked like he could take on a bear - or a horde of mammoths. 

The man rushed towards the punching bags. Towards the big, mean, scary kids. Towards Tadashi.

There he was. 

Hiro swore he could hear some sort of downbeat, some sort of burst with a bass. 

There he was was. Tadashi and the big, mean, scary kids. 

He was stuck in a brawl with another boy. Big and mean and scary. Just like him. They were flipping, twisting, detonating and pulling themselves back together. Hiro could hear the snarls from across the room. Or maybe he was just imagining them. Angry sounds coming out of angry bodies. 

_ That's not him. That's not him. _

"Matsuno! Hudson! Timeout!" The man shoved aside the small group that had formed around the two. And then it was like the world was hurled upside down, and Tadashi was looming over the boy, knuckles pounding like he was never going to stop. 

_ That's not him. _

"Tadashi!" The man pulled him off. It was more like a tear, like you could see bits of the two boys stuck to each other, like they'd been glued - joined by their skins.

The man ripped Tadashi away. Hiro didn't know how someone so small could be so strong. 

"Back off! Fight's over!" The man shouted. Hiro was too afraid to blink. The kids on the mats had stopped moving. A million eyes strained against the other side of the room. 

Tadashi's knuckles were droning. The tiny vibrations made his hands blurry.

Tadashi stepped off the matt. It almost looked mechanical. It was the way he was ripping one foot behind the other. Retreating with force. His chest looked like it was palpitating. His mouth was clamped shut, lips barely visible. And his eyes - 

Hiro felt the world go numb.

Tadashi's eyes were empty. Tadashi's eyes were the outcome of forest fires, woodland charred and bare to the bone. Ashes. Rubbles. Smoke. 

Hiro had never seen Tadashi's face like that. All roughened lines and sharp edges. The shadows were back, and they were infecting his face, leaking down the tandems in his neck and the indents in his arms and legs. 

Total eclipse.  

Hiro shuffled back. He didn't want to back away. He wanted his feet to go forward. He wanted to hold Tadashi until his body temperature went back to normal. To lukewarm. 

Tadashi's skin was blue. 

"Timeout. Everybody cool off. Five minutes," the man boomed. And then he turned towards Tadashi, and he was saying something that made Tadashi's hair go nuclear. The man pressed a finger into his chest, forcing him back a few steps. And just when Hiro thought Tadashi's face was going to burst, to fracture, to crack him wide open - the man turned his back and left the room. 

It was quiet. Hiro couldn't even hear his own chest. 

"What's up with you, man!?" The boy on the floor pulled himself onto his feet. His knees shook. Everything about him looked crumbly. Like those 'After' images from 'Before and After Drug Abuse' posters. 

"Bet you broke my nose." He tapped his nose. He flinched. "Faggot."

Tadashi's shoulders tensed. Hiro stopped breathing. 

"Do that again, and I'll make sure you get kicked off the tournament." The boy toppled towards the benches. The others watched, eyes flicking from the boy to Tadashi in rapid intervals. 

"But you know what?" The boy whipped around so fast he barely kept himself on his feet. "Faggots deserve to get kicked off of tournaments. So come on, Matsuno!" The boy lifted both of his arms. Crumbly. "Hit me." 

Hiro looked at Tadashi, and it felt like he'd never be able to look away. Normally, Hiro would know for sure that Tadashi wouldn't even bother putting up a fight with an idiot. Normally, he'd calm down and back away. Normally, he'd be the bigger person. But normally wasn't now. Now, was different. Now, Tadashi was different. 

Hiro could feel this tension in his brain. A quiet one. 

Quiet tension. 

Silence before the storm. 

 

_ Knock. Knock. Knock. _

_ Hiro looked up from his plate. There was a knock at the door. Then another. Then another. Then a big one. Then a humongous one. Then a smash.  _

_ And then I'll huff. And I'll puff. And blow your house down.  _

_ Hiro swallowed all his words down with the last bite of his PB&J. There was still another half left. But Hiro wasn't hungry anymore. He never wanted to eat again. Never. Never ever.  _

_ "Open the fucking door, Kira! Open! Goddamn it!" _

_ The door crumbled. It was going to break any second.  _

_ Hiro scrambled away from the table. He bumped his big toe on the chair. He could feel the bite claw its way up his leg. Everything was burning. He bit down on his tongue. His eyes were getting wet. And his cheeks. And his nose, too. _ _But he wasn't allowed to make a sound. _

_ His mom stood up. Slowly. The chair cracked. Hiro bit down on his tongue harder. _ _She was standing in the middle of the kitchen with nowhere to go. Her eyes were giant moon beams. But the scary kind. The kind that made the wolves howl. The kind that made them really, really hungry. _

_ "I'll break it in! I fucking swear I'll break it in. Don't think I won't."  _

 

"Fucking hit me! You've got something to prove? Hit me!" The boy shouted. Nobody moved. Why wasn't anybody moving? Why wasn't Hiro moving? 

He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. All he could do was keep his eyes open for so long they started to leak. 

 

_ His mom lifted a finger to her mouth. _

_Ssh._

_ Hiro mushed his hands onto the bottom of his face. He couldn't breathe. But not breathing was better than making breathing sounds. Because breathing sounds were loud. Breathing sounds could be heard all the way from space. Breathing sounds could be heard all the way from outside of that door.  _

_ Knock. Knock. Knock.   _

_ "I know you're home. I know you're home." _

 

"You know you want to! I know how much you want to."

_ Don't do it. _

"Or are you too scared?"

_ Don't you fucking do it. _

"Scared like always, Tadashi. Too scared. Too weak." 

 

_ Her arms shook like she wanted to keep them still but couldn't. She took her shoes off. She didn't stop staring at the door. Maybe she could see through it. Maybe she could see him standing on the other side.  _

_ The Big Bad Wolf and his dynamite fists.  _

_ Her clothes made sounds. Ruffling sounds. Hiro shook his head so much his brain went boom.  _

Stop. Stop. He's going to hear, mom. He's going to hear. 

_ She was standing there with nothing but her socks on. She had tiny feet. They were the size of Hiro's feet. His mom had the tiniest mom feet on earth. _ _Her nostrils looked really big. She was breathing too much, too fast. She spread her arms towards him. Her fingers twitched. Her wrists twitched. Everything on her body was twitchy. She wanted him to come closer. Hiro didn't know how to make his feet work. His toe still hurt. His cheeks were still wet. And his nose. His nose, too. _

_ Knock. Knock. Knock.  _

_ "Kira." _

_ His mom closed her eyes.  _

_ "Kira, please." _

_ And then there it was. The softest thing. That's how he read bedtime stories to Hiro. Hiro didn't like it when he read him bedtime stories. Hiro was too old for bedtime stories. But Hiro let him. Because he had a really nice voice. Because it made Hiro fall asleep faster. Because his mom said that Hiro needed to make him happy so he wouldn't start hurting things again. But even when he was happy he hurt things. Even when his voice was sweet and gooey like candy.  _

_ "Kira, please. God. Please. I - I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You know I don't mean it. I never do. Kira. Kira. Kira." _

_ Sweet and gooey like candy. The kind that got stuck between your teeth.  _

_ Hiro's mom had stopped reaching out for him. Her hands were gone. They were stuck inside of her sweater, fingers twisting into it over and over again. Her eyes were pointed at her feet. Her tiny mom feet.  _

_ Hiro shook his head more. The world started doing loopings.  _

Don't open the door. 

_ "Please, open the door. For me? Please? Baby, I love you so much. You know that. Kira." _

Don't open the door. 

_ She looked back at the door. Her eyes were red, just like the stains on her arms and the bony parts where her hands started. Her safety hands.  _

_ But safety hands couldn't bring Hiro to safety if they were gone.  _

_ "Please, Kira. Please. I'm so fucking - I'm so sorry! I swear to God. I just really…I need you so much. I love you. I love you. Let me in, please." _

_ Hiro shook his head. He could feel the tingles from his eyes leak down into his fingers. Between them. Over them. Under them. Everything was burning. Everything was wet.  _

_ His mom went onto her tiptoes. She was still twitchy. Hiro was so scared she would fall. She didn't. But she looked like she was falling. Like she was losing her balance while standing straight. She was falling. Down. Down. Down.  _

_ Hiro wanted to hold her so she didn't reach the bottom. Hiro wanted to turn his hands into safety hands. Hiro wanted to keep her steady. Hiro wanted to keep her safe.  _

_ But he couldn't move. All he could do was not breathe.  _

_ "Hiro, come here," she whispered. Hiro hadn't heard anything. He'd had to read her mouth. It was smaller than a gumdrop. "Here, honey." _

_ Hiro shook his head.  _

_ "It's going to be okay," she said. And now she was close enough for him to see her face better. With her wolf moon eyes and her wet cheeks and her wet nose.  _

_ "Kira, please. Please ."  _

_ The door went bump, bump, bump. Hiro's shoulders shook in time.  _

_ Bump. Bump. Bump.  _

_ Shake. Shake. Shake.  _

_ She took his shoulders. She made them stop shaking. Not really. But enough for the world to stop doing topsy-turvy loopings.  _

_ "Hiro. Go to your room." _

_ Hiro shook his head. His hair scratched his eyeballs.  _

_ "Hiro, listen to me. Okay? Listen to me." She grabbed his shoulders tighter. It hurt. It hurt so much.  _

_ "Kira!" _

_ "Hiro," she said. "Go to your room. Close the door. Don't come back out until I tell you to. Do you understand?" _

_ No .  _

_ "Kira! Fuck! Please! _

_ "Hiro, please. Go to your room."_

 

Hiro didn't know what he was doing until he realized that his feet were steering him towards the door. He was going to get help. He didn't know who could help, but everybody in this fucking room couldn't help. Hiro couldn't help. Too scared. Too weak.

 

_ Hiro couldn't stop shaking his head. His head just did whatever it wanted to do. It kept going left, right, left, right. It didn't stop. Hiro wanted to spit onto the floor. And cry. But big boys didn't cry. Big boys weren't supposed to cry. That's what he'd told Hiro. That's what he'd said when Hiro had fallen from the jungle gyms last Christmas.  _

Crying is for pussies. And you're not a fucking pussy. Am I right, Hiro? Am I right? So, stop crying. Don't do that shit around me, you hear? Don't ever cry.

_ She picked him up. Hiro wanted to scream. Hiro wanted to slam his arms and legs into every direction. Hiro wanted to set the kitchen on fire. Hiro wanted to watch everything disappear. Hiro wanted everything to stop.  _

_ But he couldn't move.  _

 

Tadashi's breathing was bad. Real bad. It was too fast. His chest was going to blow if he kept breathing so fast. The boy came closer. With his crumbly legs. There was this thing in Hiro's stomach that was expanding, forcing everything out through his pores and his throat. He was going to explode. 

"What's wrong?" The boy kicked his head to the side. "A second ago you couldn't stop. You lost it. I don't even know why he lets you come here! You should be locked up. You're such a fucking psycho." Nothing but a hiss with spit. "Hit." The boy came closer. "Me."

Hiro reached the door. He took a breath like he was getting ready to be dunked into the bottom of something that wasn't supposed to have a bottom. 

 

_ She carried him into the hallway. She carried him to his room. She sat him down on his bed. She kissed him on the top of his head. And the tip of his nose. And both of his eyelids. And the corners of his cheeks. And a million times on his mouth. She tasted like PB&J and tears.  _

_ "Don't make a sound. Lock the door. And hide. Okay? Hide, Hiro." _

_ Hide. Don't let anybody find you. Hide. Disappear. Be gone.  _

_ "I love you." _

_ The door went bump.  _

_ "Kira!"  _

_ The door went smash.  _

_ "I love you. I'm sorry." _

_ Hiro didn't know why she was saying sorry. She said sorry when she accidentally bumped her elbow against his head while cooking. She said sorry at the end of every fight. She said sorry when he fell down on sidewalks and his knees started to bleed. Even when it wasn't her fault. She said sorry.  _

_ You only ever said sorry when you wanted something to go away. Like things that hurt. _ _This hurt. This really, really hurt. _

_ But saying sorry didn't make anything go away.  _

_ Hiro watched her leave the room. He noticed she was wearing his socks. His Kaiju Krogar socks. _ _ She turned her head, not enough for him to see all of her but enough for her to see all of him.  _ _She looked the way she always did when she told him to lock the door and hide. _

_ Like she was ready for the end of the world.  _

 

"You know, I always wonder why you never go through with it. You want to hurt me. I know you do. But you can't. You're too scared. You're always too scared, Tadashi." 

Hiro scrunched his eyes closed. 

"Coward."

The snarl that followed made Hiro's heart drop to the floor. So did the growl. So did the shout. So did the hits and the jabs and the silence of the mute crowd. 

Hiro turned around. He wished he hadn't. He wished he'd never come. 

 

_ She closed the door. She was gone. Hiro couldn't move. Hiro stayed where he was. At the edge of his bed, feet dangling a million miles above the floor. He was going to break if he tipped over. He was going to die. Nobody was supposed to be alive after falling a million miles. He was going to die.  _

_ "Kira! Open the door. Please, I -" _

_ Click. Clack. Unlocked.  _

_ The door was open. The Big Bad Wolf was in their house. _

 

Tadashi was hurting somebody. With his hands. 

 

_ Hiro slammed his fists against his ears. And then it started. _

 

The same hands that had held Hiro's. 

 

_ Angry noises and something that sounded like waves. The angriest waves. _

 

The same hands that had rescued Hiro from the undertow. 

 

 _ The world started to crumble and shake. Collapsing. Burning. _

 

The same hands that could touch him in a way that made his heart ache. Gentle. Caring. 

 

_ His room cracked open. Lightning bolts and thunder clouds and razor rain.  _

 

Hands that did good things. 

 

_ Big boys didn't cry. But Hiro wasn't a big boy. _

 

Hands that could do bad things, too. 

 

_ Hiro was nothing at all. _

 

The two boys were bawling across the mats at light speed. Everything else was stuck in a broken time space continuum. 

This was Tadashi with all the layers loose. And with each punch that ripped its way through his knuckles, Hiro could see everything underneath. Beneath Tadashi's skin. Inside of his chest. Tucked behind his brain. Hidden between the fibers of his muscles. 

 

_ He couldn't be quiet. Hecouldn't lock the door. He couldn't hide. _

_ He couldn't do anything. _

_ He couldn't save her. He was too scared to save her. He didn't have safety hands.  _

Hiro was standing in the door frame. He was ready for it. He was ready to call for help. Because he didn't know what to do - how to help. Hiro turned his back on the room. Hiro turned his back on Tadashi. 

_ Too scared. Too weak. Coward. Go to your room. Lock the door. Hide, Hiro. Hide. Disappear. Don't let him find you. Don't let anyone find you. Don't help. _

_You're always too scared to help. _

Hiro turned around. 

Hiro ran into the room. 

Hiro ran into the ball of limbs and kicks and snarls. 

It was like bawling through a tornado. Knuckles here. Heels there. Cracks and tears. Hiro could hear violent heartbeats straight through his skin. Everything morphed into this organism hellbent on tearing the world apart. 

Something jabbed his cheek. Something rammed its way into his ribs. But Hiro kept searching for the middle between the two. He was trying to create the eye of the storm. 

"Stop!" Scream. "Fucking stop!" 

His voice was swallowed by the drums in their chests. Red haze.  Everything was moving too fast. He was tumbling through the sky, body bracing for impact. A fist plowed his stomach. Dynamite. Hiro's body stopped for a heartbeat. His lungs pulled themselves together. He choked. He wheezed. He kept going. Ripping. Wrenching. Clawing. Desperate to disassemble the organism into its tattered little pieces. 

"Tadashi." It wasn't strong enough for it to be heard by anybody but himself. 

" _Tadashi_!" 

Something stopped. Wavered. A pair of lungs ready to exhale. Hiro grabbed him by the collar and yanked him against his chest. Foreign hands grabbed the crumbly boy's shoulders. His heels were pushing him away. His face was smudged. Red corrupting the color of his skin beneath. He crawled on his hands and knees, the others ripping him away and pulling him onto his feet.

"Coward!" The boy said. It was nothing but a snarl, something feral, something that made Tadashi's body tense against Hiro's fingertips. 

_ No, don't you fucking -  _

Tadashi ripped his way out of Hiro's grip, surging forward like he was going to wreck through the very fundament of human matter. 

Hiro scrambled after him, ramming all of his weight into the space between Tadashi's shoulder blades. Their bodies clattered to the ground. Hiro curled his fingers into Tadashi's shirt. He ripped him so far up his chest was lifted from the ground. 

" _Tadashi_."  Hiro didn't sound like himself. Too low. Too urgent.

Tadashi scrambled to the side, twisting his body onto his back. But Hiro kept him in place, straddling his waist, pressing his knuckles into his chest. It was moving too fast. Tadashi's chest. Chests weren't supposed to move so fast. Up and down. Up and down. There was something drumming against the bones beneath, amplifying, deepening. 

" Look at me!" Hiro kept saying the words until he couldn't even feel his mouth moving. But Tadashi kept squirming, big hands coming up to shove him off. Hiro grabbed Tadashi's shirt tighter. He pulled him up. He slammed him down. Whiplash. 

"Tadashi, look at me! It's me. It's me. I'm here." 

_ I just need to see you. Fuck. I just really, really needed to see you. _

Tadashi's chest stopped moving. All Hiro could feel was his hurricane heartbeat. 

His eyes were forest fires. His eyes were burning down, crumbling to ash, to nothing. His eyes were gone. Empty again. 

"Stop." Hiro's vocal chords could barely keep their contact. Hiro pushed his forehead down, crushing their skulls together so they could breathe the same air. Hot air. Used air. Air that wasn't supposed to be breathed. But they were breathing it. Bad air.

"It's okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. You're okay. You're okay."

And the more Hiro said it, the more Tadashi shook his head. 

_ I'm ready. I'm here. I'm not going to hide. I'm not going to disappear.   _

_ I'm here. I'm right here.  _

 

✦

 

Hiro hated hospitals. They could be filled with people but still feel empty and alone. The worst kind of solitude. It was in the way everybody looked at you. It was in the way the air made your lungs fade faster. It was in the way you felt the need to grab everything tighter like you were seconds away from losing. 

Hospitals made you feel like you were the last person on earth, and all that was left were peroxide rooms and squeaky floors. 

Tadashi was in the waiting area, crumpled onto those uncomfortable chairs with uncomfortable cushions. The tiny man with the beard was with him, looming over him, eating him with his tiny shadow. He was shouting. It wasn't helping. Hiro wanted to grab him by his stupid fucking beard and hurl him out of the next window. 

Tadashi looked like he needed someone to hold his hands. Hiro wanted to be there to hold his hands. 

The conversation seemed to stretch out into eternity. Hiro was ready to hurt something. Like that beard. Fuck, he hated that beard. And just when he was about to barge right in with knuckles ready to wreck and a will ready to tear apart that facial manhood, the man held his breath, and the veins in his neck stopped bulging, and he laid a hand on Tadashi's shoulder. 

And Tadashi looked like it hurt. 

The man left. Hiro stayed. 

Tadashi lifted his head. His hands looked so empty. Hiro ripped himself free, stumbling through the waiting area like he'd forgotten how to keep his footing. 

"What did he say?" Because that was all he had. Everything else wasn't good enough for him to get away with. Hiro was standing above him. Towering. He didn't like this angle, but he couldn't make himself sit down. Maybe if he stood tall long enough, he'd scare off all the bad things that were trying to get Tadashi. He wanted to fend them off. Hiro wanted to be his flood wall. Hiro wanted to be his white blood. Hiro wanted to be the only thing standing between Tadashi and everything bad in the world. 

Hiro grabbed Tadashi's hands before anything else could happen. Figure-Eight-Follow-Through. The kind of knot climbers used so they wouldn't fall. 

"We're both off the tournament," Tadashi said. He had his eyes closed. Or maybe they were open. But barely. Hiro couldn't tell from all the way up here. All he could see where his lashes and the dark discoloration spilling over his left eye socket. 

"And class," Tadashi continued. He swallowed. He pulled his face together, scrunched it like he was trying to make his skull shrink. "I don't care about the tournament. I just - I'm not allowed to come back until I've figured myself out. What does that even - How - I just - " Tadashi stopped. He looked up. His eyes were still in the process of rebuilding, of growing back to normal. Budding fibers after a purge. 

"I know I hurt him. He's - Kai always does that, and he…It always happens, and I never let myself - " Tadashi swallowed. "He deserved it," he said. And it wasn't a whisper. And it wasn't a shout. It was something in between, something steady, solid, firm. Practically unbreakable. He looked so unapologetic. There was something heady about it, like drinking on an empty stomach or getting high with a punch. 

"Yeah." Hiro cleared his throat. His voice was clumpy. "Yeah, he did."

Tadashi slumped forward, headfirst into Hiro's stomach. Hiro let go of his fingers and wove them into his hair instead. He had the best hair on this whole entire planet. Tadashi's hair was the physical equivalent of a sigh. Faint and wispy. He could feel the heat of his skull underneath. He was so, so warm. 

"Are you really here…or am I just imagining things?" Tadashi mumbled. Hiro couldn't help but laugh. It was short enough, quiet enough. He didn't feel like laughing. 

"I'm really here," he said, fingers weaving spirals into Tadashi's head. Maybe like this he could get closer to his brain - and then he could scoop out all the bad bits and the things that hurt so much. 

"You're not clinically insane yet."

"I feel like I am," Tadashi said. 

"You're not. I know you're not. I know what people are like when they're clinically insane. You're not." 

Hiro plucked a string of fuzz out of the strands. He wanted to live in Tadashi's hair. He wanted to lie on the top of his head and wrap his hair around his waist so he'd never fall off. 

"Why?"

"Hm?" Hiro's fingers stopped moving. 

"Why did you have to come?"

It was the 'have' that sounded out of place. It made him look angrier. At least he was being honest. Hiro could be honest, too.

Hiro flattened his palm over the top of Tadashi's scalp. He let it roam like he was trying to create static. Tadashi's head was a plasma globe.  

"I just needed to see you."

Tadashi's shoulders shook. Just once. One huff. "Fred?" Another huff. 

He pulled his head back. Hiro's fingers were stuck. He didn't want to let go of Tadashi's hair. 

"No," Hiro said.  

Tadashi lifted an eyebrow. Hiro let go of his hair. Tadashi flinched like it had hurt. Hiro didn't like seeing that expression on his face. Hurt. Pain. It made him look so small. He'd probably fit into Hiro's palm. 

"Nobody was supposed to know. You weren't -" Tadashi shifted. He hissed, one arm pressed against his ribs. Hiro already had his hands hovering in the air, not sure as to what they were supposed to do first. Hiro wanted them to do everything at once. Mend and fight and hold.  

"You weren't supposed to know," Tadashi said. 

And that hurt. Hiro didn't know why that hurt. Hiro had things Tadashi wasn't supposed to know. Of course, he did. And there were sides to him Tadashi had never seen, sides he didn't even know about. So how was Hiro the one to judge? Tadashi had secrets, too. Hiro was selfish for wanting to know all of them without letting Tadashi know all of his in return. 

_Selfish_. 

"I get it," Hiro said. He sat down. The floor was cold. He was looking at Tadashi, and this angle wasn't any different. Tadashi still looked smaller than him, far smaller, something that he could scoop up and tuck away.

"I get it," Hiro said again. "You need something to just - let it all out. You know, somewhere no one really knows you, where you can just give into all the things that are fucking with your head." Hiro took Tadashi's hands and spread them out on his knees. His knuckles were busted, bruised, skin tattered. Hiro brushed a finger over the crooked ridges. "Somewhere you can pretend like fighting back actually works," he breathed. "And I mean, it - it does get better. But just for a while. And then it all comes back again, and you're so angry, and you just - need to get rid of it. But at the same time…you know that it's never going to leave. I get it. I know what that's like."

Hiro spread his hands over Tadashi's. He pressed his fingers into the veins on his wrists. They were blue. Bright blue river creeks. 

"I used - " Hiro clamped his lips between his teeth before continuing. " I used to botfight…My father was a mechanic. I used to sneak into his old workshop. And I put together everything I could find, and I just spent hours building things that could fight back…you know…when I couldn't." Hiro pressed his eyes closed, letting the black behind his lids take over. He could hear it, the roaring of the crowd, the beat in his ears, his fingers gliding over metal knobs, the feeling of winning, winning, winning. "I was good. Really good. And it felt good, too. Winning. Because maybe for a while it felt like I was beating everything that was standing in my way. I was lying to myself. Because it didn't help. Not in the real world. I wasn't winning in real life. I was challenging myself to fight something that was, like, make-believe." Hiro opened his eyes. The world was blotchy. Tadashi's face was blotchy. Reds and blues and lilacs. Colors that weren't supposed to be there. 

"My real opponents weren't in the alleys. They were in my home," Hiro said so quiet nobody else would hear. "They were in my head." 

Tadashi looked at him with an expression that tore his chest apart. And Hiro didn't mind. He didn't mind Tadashi opening up his rib cage and looking in, seeing the broken little thing he kept tucked between his lungs. 

Tadashi pulled his hands back. But it wasn't enough. Hiro grabbed his hands again, and he held on as tight as he could. 

"He was right," Tadashi said. His voice cracked. "About me being a coward." 

"You're not," Hiro said. It was louder than he'd wanted it to be. It was angrier, too. "Look, of - of all things, Tadashi, you're not a fucking coward. Not in a million years. Not ever."

Tadashi dug his fingernails into Hiro's hands. It hurt. But Hiro just held on tighter. He didn't care if Tadashi clawed his hands apart. He was not going to let go.

"I lied," Tadashi said. "About the seat belt." He was staring down, but he wasn't looking at their hands. "The seat belt wasn't stuck. I - help. I didn't help. I didn't help. Too scared."

Hiro didn't know what he was talking about. Hiro wanted to make himself understand, but Tadashi kept babbling, and Hiro didn't know how to keep up. 

_ Seat belt? What seat belt? _

The look on Tadashi's face was something Hiro had seen before. Seeing him like this scared him the most. 

Tadashi looked like his parents with missing pieces, like his parents on a rainy day, like his parents after the fall. 

Hiro swallowed. But he couldn't swallow away the storm forming in the middle of his brain. He couldn't do anything about it. All he could do was let it mess him up from the inside-out. Lightning and thunder clouds and razor rain.

Hiro stood up. He could stand steady with a storm in his head. He was big enough, strong enough. 

Tadashi pulled him closer. 

Tadashi pulled Hiro into him, into his arms, into his skin, into his rib cage. Hiro gripped onto everything he could. He held on tight. He was not going to let go. Safety hands weren't made for letting go. 

 

✦ 

 

"Did you know this whole time?" 

Leo bent over the steering wheel. His hair was a sandstorm. His eyes were stormier. It was something you knew wasn't going to calm down anytime soon. It was raining. Leo's eyes made it feel like it was raining in the car, too, the cold seeping into the leather and the cushions and their clothes. Everything was drenched.

"No, no, I - I didn't," Hiro said. He kept his eyes strained against the fingers that were clawing into his thighs. He didn't feel like gripping into his sweater. He didn't want to. He liked seeing them out in the open. His safety hands. 

The whole car ride home had been a cage everybody had wanted to escape from. But nobody had risked tucking and rolling out of a moving vehicle. Maybe Hiro would've done it if the ride had lasted a few seconds longer. He'd been ready to lunge right onto the asphalt and crack every bone in his body. 

Leo nodded. His forehead bumped against the steering wheel. Hiro didn't know what to do. Pat him on the back? On the shoulder? Tell him that it was all going to be okay? Hug him?

Hiro felt like an intruder. He wasn't allowed to do those things. 

"He was good," Leo said. "Started at a young age. His dad taught him. Some real Bruce Lee stuff."

Hiro swallowed. He didn't want to think about Tadashi hurting others. Good hands doing bad things. 

But what was good anyways? What was bad? Hiro had seen enough to know the world wasn't just black and white. 

And if he was being completely honest with himself - he didn't know who Tadashi was. Not really. But he was getting closer to it. And it had nothing to do with everything he'd imagined. Real Tadashi was different. Real Tadashi was deeper, more thorough, more permanent, someone Hiro couldn't just turn his back from. Real Tadashi had the universe in his palms, and somewhere inside of that cosmic structure, there was earth - and there was Hiro. 

Real Tadashi was going to go down in history. 

"And then…when he lost them - his parents - Tadashi, he - It wasn't safe. Got impulsive. Aggressive. It wasn't safe for the school. Wasn't safe for him. You know, for himself." Leo leaned back into the driver's seat. He fisted his hair and pulled it out of his eyes. Stormy. Hiro stared out of the rain stained window. He watched the cafe lights burn through the haze. The cafe was a beacon. Maybe even more so, with the world around it going under. A ship in a turbulence, its prow splitting the waves apart.

"So, we - took him out of the program. And we got him some help. Real help. And then he got into SFIT, and he was just doing so well. It was just so good. And it's - Cass is frustrated because she thinks we missed everything. We didn't know. We didn't see it. Should've known. Said the bruises came from the lab. Like hell." Leo huffed. He slammed a hand against the steering wheel. Hiro twitched. But he stayed put. He kept his shoulders straight and his hair out of his eyes. "Kid broke his nose for Christ's sake. It's fifth grade all over again. One time is enough. More than enough."

Leo rubbed his face until it was all blotchy red. 

"Sorry," he said, eyes closed, mouth gone. "Sorry," he said again. And then again and again, in synch with the rain hitting the car. "He's my kid. He's - I want to do everything right for him. I need to," Leo said. Hiro had never heard his voice so small.

Hiro looked up. All he could see was the blotchy roof of the car. But he could hear her. In his head. In his skin. In the middle of his chest. 

Hiro pried his fingers out of his thighs. He reached out. He wrapped his hand around Leo's wrist. It was like holding onto a tree stump with hair. And it felt stupid. Holding people's wrists wasn't going to make anything better. It wasn't going to make anything go away. But Hiro just held on. And it felt like enough.

"Thank you." Leo turned. He was looking at Hiro with his thunderstorm eyes. The clouds were ripping themselves open, breaking for a little indigo to seep through. "For just - being there."

"I didn't know," Hiro said. "I was just there to - "  _ See him. Just see him.  _

"It's alright." Leo nodded. Hiro didn't know why he was nodding. It felt like the worst time to nod. It felt like the worst time to say 'alright'.  

"It's gonna to be alright," Leo said. "Everything's gonna be alright." 

And maybe when Leo said it was going to be alright, you sort of had to believe him. Maybe it was his size or the fact that his voice could scare anything off that would've wanted to do you harm. Or maybe it was just because he could make it sound like the truth. Like the truth and nothing but the truth. 

"So what now?" Hiro's voice was all croaky. He didn't feel like talking. He didn't feel like doing anything. Except - holding someone's hands. Tadashi's hands. 

"I don't know," Leo said. "Will you stay?"

Hiro scrunched his eyebrows. 

Leo inhaled so long it was like he was trying to suck the car dry. All the air and hurt was trapped inside of his giant lungs.

"For him?" 

It sounded like more than a question. 

"I - " Hiro couldn't breathe. Leo had wrung the atmosphere dry.

_ Will I stay? _

"Cass got the couch ready and everything. I mean, she just - She thinks if you were there it would just be better. I think so, too. I really do."

Hiro stared out of the window. 

_Better_. Hiro and _better_. _Better _ was good.  _ Better _ was more than just good.  _ Better _ was _better_. 

Hiro and better. 

Hiro didn't know if he was in the position to come to a conclusion. Maybe because it didn't feel that way. He didn't feel that way. Or maybe he just couldn't afford to. 

But what if he wanted to?

_ Me and good. Me and better.  _

"Just for today?" Leo asked. "I mean, man - I get it. If you - I was going to drive you home, if you weren't up for - "

"Okay," Hiro said. He didn't know if he was nodding. He wanted to nod. Just like Leo. Hiro couldn't feel his head moving. He hoped he was nodding. "Yeah. Okay, I'll -" Hiro cleared his throat. "Stay. I'll stay."

_ For all of you. For him.  _

_ For me. _

 

✦

 

Sleeping here was strange. Lying on the bumped up couch and staring at floral tapestries and a million family photos - was strange. Hiro was pretty sure they amounted to a million. It was like every moment in their past had been plastered into their present. Constant reminders. And they were never bad things. Not here. Here, it was an endless loop of perfect memories. Hiro liked the ones where Tadashi was younger, where he had chubby cheeks and braces and horrible tie-dye shirts. Leo had probably handed them down like some gift for the coming generations. Tadashi looked nice in tie-dye shirts. They made his smiles brighter. Like a magnifying glass. Blinding. Hiro was just happy Leo hadn't talked him into wearing bandanas. But he was pretty sure Tadashi would look amazing in bandanas, too. It was safe to say that Tadashi could get away with anything. 

Hiro caught a glimpse of a picture on the windowsill. 'Halloween 1999' had been sprawled into the corner with a sharpie. Tiny Tadashi in a tiny banana suit. He was holding up a pumpkin shaped bucket full of candy. Even back then his smiles had been too big for his face. Half of his front teeth were missing. For some weird reason that made Hiro like him even more. He wished Tadashi could've been there to have taken him trick-or-treating. Hiro would've shared all of his candy. Hiro didn't like to share, but Tadashi made him feel like sharing the world. 

Maybe Hiro would steal the picture in the morning. It was worth every single delinquent act. 

Hiro pressed a smile into his pillow. It smelled like home, familiar and warm, the way babies smelled on the top of their heads. Smiling felt good. His mouth was relieved to have that gentle tug back. Hiro touched his face. He mushed it between his fingers, spreading it wide like he was trying to unfold his skin. He felt stupid for wanting to smile at someone. It made him feel better. It made everything else feel better. 

Hiro and better. 

He wasn't sure if he'd made everything better, the way they'd all hoped for - the way Hiro had hoped for. He'd just been there, and it had felt the way the whole entire situation was supposed to feel like. A little taut. A little sad. A little something close to anger. 

Hiro hoped his hands had been able to help enough. And his smiles. He hoped his smiles had helped. And maybe Hiro was naive for wishing that he could mend things with nothing but the flex of his mouth and the strength of his hands. Mending. Stitching up. Pulling up from the edge of cliffs. Throwing out safety rings. 

Helping. Help. 

_ I didn't help. The seat belt wasn't stuck. _

Hiro could see his face on the back of his eyelids. Tadashi's face with a surplus of shadows. 

_ Too scared. Too weak. Coward. _

"I didn't help," Hiro said in time with the imaginary voice in his head. Tadashi's voice. 

_ I didn't help.  _

Hiro wondered what things Tadashi was running from, what shadows scared him at night, which feelings took over his hands when he switched his brain off. And the longer Hiro let his head build answers that felt like more than just assumptions, the more he felt like running to his room to just -  see him . Maybe he didn't need answers. Maybe all he needed right now was the simple fact that he hadn't vanished, hadn't disappeared while Hiro was lying here and falling further and further into his head.

And wasn't that the most stupid thing to be afraid of? Thinking someone could just evaporate and seize to exist from one moment to the next? Erased for good. Gone with so many loose ends waiting to be tied. 

_ I just really need to see him.  _

It was a spot on Hiro's back that wanted to be scratched. It was that inkling of having left the doors unlocked. All the doors. 

_ I just really need to see him.  _

 

 

 

Tadashi's room was dark. Hiro didn't know what he'd expected. With all the creaking floorboards he'd hit, the whole entire Northern Hemisphere should've been up by now. But Tadashi's room was tethered to a blackout. Hiro could hear him breathe. His lungs made sounds that were better than music. Hiro wished he could live with Tadashi's chest pressed against his ears forever. 

His breathing was the only indicator of him still being alive. And that's all Hiro had wanted to make sure of. That Tadashi was alright, right? That he was still there. That he hadn't left without him. If Tadashi were to vanish, Hiro wanted him to take him with him.  

Hiro couldn't make himself leave. Not now. He didn't want Tadashi to be left alone. Even when he was asleep, Hiro wanted to protect him from all the shadows, from all the bad things that were out to get the him, from all that went 'bump' in the night. And when Tadashi was asleep, he couldn't defend himself. Hiro would. Hiro would keep him safe. 

Like a guard dog. Great. This was so stupid. 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid.  _

And while Hiro's brain was losing itself in a self-loathing cycle of profanity, his feet were already steering him towards the bed. He stopped in time for his knees to not hit the frame. Barely.

He held his breath. His eyes adjusted in fractions. The window was open, letting in the wind and the calls of the midnight hour. And Tadashi was lying there, curled up into his arms and his legs and the things in his head. Tadashi's sheets were the color of the moon. Tadashi's face was the middle of the night. 

"Hiro?"

Hiro's knees hit the bed frame. Tadashi's eyes fluttered open. Fluttered. Only butterflies did that. And eyelids. 

Hiro held his breath. Maybe Tadashi would close them again. Maybe he could sneak back without anybody noticing. Maybe Tadashi would think this was a dream. Nothing but a dream. 

"Hiro?" Tadashi's voice was throaty. It was thick enough to make Hiro's muscles tingle. 

_ Fuck. _

"Hi," Hiro mouthed. Tadashi plunged his face into his pillow before coming back up for air. He looked so lived-in, something that fit snug around you, something you'd worn so often it matched each and every one of your angles. Worn to perfection. Like Hiro's Android Alto sweater. Except Tadashi smelled better. Way better. 

Tadashi scrunched his eyebrows. 

_ Fuck. _

"Why are you - "

"I don't know." Hiro cut him off. Because he didn't. He didn't know. Tadashi's face was all eyebrows and night skies. 

"Hi," Tadashi mumbled. He had no idea what was going on. Hiro wanted to pet him, or nibble on him, or squeeze him into his backpack and steal him away. He wasn't sure yet. He had no idea what was going on either. 

"Hi," Hiro said. He swallowed. It was loud. He swore it echoed. "I wanted to check on you."

_ I just really needed to see you. _

Tadashi rubbed a hand over his face. He flinched when his fingers brushed the bruise punched into his left eye socket. Hiro flinched, too. He wished he could suck away pain like those werewolves on television. Tadashi rolled across the bed, hand batting at the bedside table. A light went on. A glowing ball hovered into the air, slowly rising, climbing out of a comatose state. Hiro wondered if that was what stars looked like up close. 

"Works on magnetic fields," Tadashi said. Or grumbled. It was more like a grumble. Too low to be considered human. Hiro liked Tadashi's sleepy voice.  

Hiro ripped his eyes away from the floating star ball. Tadashi was still fumbling for something on the table. Hiro was about to offer some help when he pulled a pair of glasses from under the stack of paper and books. 

Tadashi mushed the glasses on. He was probably too tired to care. They were sitting on his nose all crooked.  

"Glasses," Hiro said. More to himself than to anybody else. 

"Contacts," Tadashi huffed before falling back into the bed. He had a hand pressed against his ribs, mouth contorted into a crack. Hiro could feel the pain, too. Especially in his head. His head was aching. 

"So…you wanted to check up on me in the middle of the night?" Tadashi turned towards the digital clock on the bedside table. "Morning actually."

_ 1:05 a.m.  _

Hiro cleared his throat. He stopped staring. He didn't know what to do with the image of Tadashi with glasses. It was messing up everything that had made sense a few seconds ago. Not that anything had ever made sense. He just really liked pretending. 

"Okay. Yeah - uh - okay." Hiro stumbled back. His elbow hit the desk chair. Right in the middle. Hiro hissed. But the pain didn't stop him from retreating. "Yeah, like, if you put it that way - yeah. Stupid. I'm gonna - " Hiro swallowed. It sounded like the loudest thing on earth. "Go. I'm gonna go. Sorry. This was all just a dream."

Hiro was so stupid. 

"Hiro?"

Hiro turned so fast his elbow hit the chair again. Hiro was still really stupid. 

"Hm?" He didn't know how he was capable of making a single syllable sound like something hopeful. The naive kind. The desperate kind. 

The star ball hovered right above Tadashi's head. Hiro could see his throat bob in the lowlights. 

"Stay?" Tadashi batted the ball away. It bounced towards the book shelves. 

"Scoot," Hiro said before he had enough time to force his legs to hurl him back out of the room. He felt drunk, glazed over. The ball drifted back towards the bed. Tadashi's eyebrows rose above the black rim of his glasses. The ball bumped against the side of his head. Hiro shuffled forward, knees back to hitting the bed frame.

"If I'm going to stay, I'm not going to sleep on the freaking floor. Besides -" Hiro nudged his head down at Tadashi."Your bed's big enough." It wasn't. Hiro just needed another excuse. Something better than 'You look so fucking comfortable. I want to use your stomach as a pillow.'. 

Tadashi's chest rose. He had a big chest. He pulled the blanket back and scooted further towards the other side of the bed. Hiro wouldn't have minded if he'd stayed right where he'd been. Their arms would've touched. And their knees. And their hips. And their pinkies. 

Hiro tried to slip in systematically. But he was too giddy to do anything other than tumble face first into the free space. He sort of felt like a penguin or just something that lacked all coordination whatsoever. He swore he'd heard a snort. 

"Sorry," Hiro mumbled once he pulled the blanket up to his chin. "Your bed's really warm." Because his brain had somehow convinced him ofsaying really awkward stuff to make his apologies more genuine. "Like a fresh muffin. Because muffins are really warm. And they taste good."

Hiro scrunched his eyes closed. Jesus fucking Christ. 

"Thank you," Tadashi said - like that was a rational response to utter bullshit. Hiro laughed for a minute straight. Or maybe just a few seconds. But it had felt like a minute. Like the longest minute of all time. Like the best minute of all time. 

He coughed out the last few blips. He tried to clear his throat, but that made his chest gurgle. He didn't want his body to make weird sounds when Tadashi was around. He turned his head. Tadashi was staring at him. He wasn't smiling. Not exactly. His face was tinged a little brighter than usual, like there was something illuminating him from the inside out. He was outshining the floating star ball. And maybe for a second, Hiro could pretend he couldn't see the bruise on his face or the scratch above his eyebrow or the tiny shadows retreating into his hairline. 

Hiro's breathing toned down. He tried clearing his throat again. Quietly. It didn't clear up.  

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"What?"

"Everything?"

"Yeah." Tadashi nodded. His glasses were even more crooked. Hiro wanted to nudge them into place, but he sort of liked Tadashi with crooked glasses. It made him look a little dazed, a little confused. "Like someone threw me into a wood chipper and knitted me back together with their eyes closed. My brain's practically silly putty," Tadashi said. 

Hiro didn't know if he was allowed to laugh. He chewed the insides of his cheeks raw. Tadashi's face cracked open. Just a little. The light inside of his skull brightened up his teeth. 

"That's really, really horrible," Hiro said. 

"Yeah. Tell me about it." 

Hiro shimmied a little closer. Tadashi smelled like antiseptic and boy. He had the best boy smell. The type that smelled warmer. Headier. 

"What kind of silly putty?" Hiro whispered. 

"The homemade kind," Tadashi whispered. They didn't actually have to talk so quietly, but Hiro liked it. It made it feel like they were trading secrets. 

"Ouch."

"I know."

"So…I'm guessing that's why you need glasses?"

"Because of homemade silly putty?"

"No, because the person who put you back together didn't know how to make your eyes right again."

"My eyes were never right to begin with."

"I like your eyes."

"You do?"

"Yeah. And I like your glasses, too. They make you look like a - "

"A nerd?"

"No. I mean, yeah. Sort of. But the low budget porno kind."

Hiro had no idea why he let his mouth run wild when he knew his brain was in its too-tired-to-give-a-shit state. He was about to dig his face into the comforter when he felt Tadashi's chest vibrating one bed sheet away. Tadashi was laughing. Hiro's muscles were letting loose the symphonies. Vivaldi and Bach and Mozart. All at once. 

And it was such a relief to see Tadashi's face unfurling again. He was a giant field of sunflowers bursting open in time-lapse. It made everything else disappear. All the bad things. All the backwards things. When Tadashi's face did this, the world turned into a better place. The best place. 

Hiro listened to Tadashi laugh until he was sure he had memorized every gasp for air, every trill in between. Hiro was slipping in, bathing in it, scrubbing it into his skin. Tadashi without the shadows. Tadashi with all the lights switched on. Tadashi in a good, better, best moment. 

Tadashi like this needed to be captured and squeezed into the memoir on the walls of his home. Right next to the 'Halloween 1999' picture. 

It was hard to believe that this person was the same person on the gym mats, the same person who had fit into Hiro's palm at the hospital.

When Tadashi smiled, all his cracks smoothed over, all his bruises disappeared, all his scars seeped back into his undertones.

Like this - Tadashi was the sun. And that was all.  

Hiro didn't know when their hands had found each other beneath the sheets. Familiar fingers woven into him. Holding Tadashi's hand was like taking a breath of fresh air after coming up from the bottom. Hiro wondered how he would ever be capable of going on without this. Without all of this. Without the spectrum. Without him. It was sad that he thought he'd have to let this go in time. But that was the way things worked. You always had to let go. Either that, or you were the one to  _ be _ let go. And you had no control over that, over being let go. At least being the one to let go gave you some time to prepare. And Hiro wondered how much time he had. Because every amount he came up with in his head was too little. It was not going to be enough. Not enough for anything to count. 

Tadashi had stopped laughing. Hiro had stopped breathing. 

They were both staring at the bright ball above their heads. Only now, did Hiro notice that it was rotating. A glowing planet going round and round and round. 

"I'm sorry," Tadashi said. Hiro couldn't come up with enough anger to tell him to shut up. 

"About today. About everything. I'm so sorry."

"Don't start. No apologizing," Hiro said with an exhale. 

"I just - " Tadashi squeezed his fingers so hard their knuckles cracked. "I - I don't want you to see things like that."

Hiro huffed. He felt Tadashi scoot a little closer. Their arms glued themselves together. And their hips. And their legs. 

"I can handle more than you think." Hiro pulled their hands out from under the bed sheets. He held their fingers into the light, watched it spill across their contours. The gauze wrapped around Tadashi's knuckles made his hands look bigger. But they felt the same. Their hands. They'd done the same things. They'd hurt the same way. 

"No, I know - I just - " Tadashi puffed out a fist full of air. Hiro could feel Tadashi's right foot twitch on the comforter. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore." 

Hiro hadn't heard that tone often. It was raw. It was something that had to be forced out of the bottom of his stomach. Out of hiding. It was something that wasn't ready for this atmosphere. When Tadashi's voice sounded like that - it was the most honest thing you were ever going to hear in your whole entire life. 

"I know," Hiro said. "Me neither." He hoped it sounded just as real as it felt. 

"I felt like - like I had everything under control. I was so _sure_.  And then Baymax came along, and Baymax was this - Baymax was the best thing in my life. Baymax was my triumph."

Hiro turned to look at him. There were worlds tumbling out of those eyes. 

"And I thought I was - Everything was good. Everything was so good." Tadashi turned their hands in the pillars of light. Hiro thought they looked like ancient Greek sculptures, the kind that had been carved from the inside out, the kind that stood for battles won and lost and more to come. Historical. Frozen in action. Set in stone. "And now it's - I mean, it's like hitting an all-time low all over again. Like I was a few feet away from the finish line, and now I'm back. Back at the beginning." 

"But it - it feels good, right? Admitting it." Hiro closed his eyes. The back of his lids were bright red. "My mom used to say that knowing where you are makes every journey easier. Because you have something to go by, something you can follow through with. It's not much. But it's something. Something is always better than nothing."

Hiro opened his eyes. The star ball was right above his forehead. He flicked it away. It was bouncy. Like vinyl. Baymax was made out of vinyl. 

_ Baymax was the best thing in my life. _

Everything you made had a purpose. Everything you did was always defined by more. 

Hiro had made many things, done many things. He was living his life trying to make up for a past he couldn't fix. And in the end, that's what everybody did. Everybody had to live with memories stuck in their heads. They weren't something you could just get rid of - like childhood clothing you'd gotten too big for, like the dust on the boxes you had stowed away at the back of your attic. 

Yesterday stayed with you for the rest of your life.  

And Hiro wondered what the reason was for building Baymax, for the need to help, for saying sorry even when it wasn't his fault. 

_ What have your yesterdays been like, Tadashi? _

But maybe Hiro wasn't ready to know. Maybe Tadashi wasn't ready to answer.  

"Now it just depends on what you're gonna do with it," Hiro said instead. "With knowing that maybe you're not okay." 

"That's the thing." Tadashi's right foot wouldn't stop twitching. "I don't know. I don't fucking know." 

Cursing made Tadashi sound like something big and something small at the same time. Something big trying to prove itself. Something small trying to swallow down all the frustration. 

This time Hiro was the one to crush their hands. Their fingers crumbled under the pressure. 

"It's okay. I think…I think the hardest part is over," Hiro said. 

He had no clue what he was talking about. Because he didn't know what he'd done with his own 'I'm not okay'. And he remembered that first night at the cafe, that night where he'd stumbled into Tadashi's arms all drenched and out of it. He'd told Tadashi the truth. And what had he done with that truth? What had Hiro done with 'I'm not okay'?

He didn't know. Or maybe he'd been so caught up in this spectrum that he hadn't payed any attention to that. It was like he'd been wearing blinders on the sides of his head, going through day after day without realizing that he couldn't see the rest of the world. And maybe it felt good - forgetting, pretending that all the bad parts of him didn't exist. It felt like a build-up of white lies. One day it was all going to come crashing down. 

Maybe that was the real hard part. Maybe that was the hardest part of them all. 

Letting the world crash onto your shoulders and getting back up again. 

Hiro didn't want Tadashi to go through the hardest part. Hiro wanted to be the only thing standing between him and all the bad things in the world. Hiro wanted to be his fallout shelter. Hiro wanted to be his burrow during forest fires. Hiro wanted to be his beacon in the dead of the night. And maybe Tadashi would do the same for him. Maybe he could be the same for him. Maybe they could go through the hardest part together. Maybe they could get back up. Hand in hand. 

But that was just a maybe. Life was a giant bucket full of maybes. 

"What?"

Tadashi had his eyebrows quirked. Hiro hadn't realized he'd been staring. Their hands fell back onto the blanket with a puff. 

And the longer Hiro looked at Tadashi, the more he wanted to see him smile again, hear him laugh again. He wanted to forget everything that had happened today. He wanted to dig them a hole that they could hide in, away from the world and all the real things that were trying to force them onto their knees. 

"Do you think I should cut my hair?" Hiro didn't care if that was the most stupid question in the history of stupid questions. It was all he had right now. Tadashi's mouth kicked out a grin. And whatever Hiro had right now was more than enough. Tadashi was back to smiling. Big and bedazzling. 

Hiro never wanted the world to get them. 

"I like your hair like this," Tadashi said. It was more like a breath, like he was trying to make something fall asleep. "Makes you look like a mad scientist - or the Lion King."

Hiro couldn't help but smile right back. It felt so good. This. This right here. Feathery like a pillow fight or like sneaking into the kitchen at three a.m. to eat cereal on the counter with the lights off. 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, I feel like growing my hair out, too."

"God, no, don't"

"What? Why? I think I'd look pretty 'rad'." Tadashi lowered his voice. He sounded like Leo. Exactly like Leo. Hiro thought that was the most insane thing ever. 

"No!" Hiro's smile widened so much he couldn't help but let a laugh slip right through the gap between his teeth. 

"I could get a surfboard and a rainbow mini van," Tadashi continued. "Or maybe I could make it cover up my face like Gogo." 

"Don't you dare. I mean, otherwise - otherwise nobody would be able to see  this -" Hiro surged forward, one hand forcing Tadashi's short fringe out of his forehead, the other pointed at his eyes. "Your eyeballs are magic. You're practically a wizard. You make wrinkles disappear with your smiles. And brains. They make brains disappear, too. And I mean, they're intergalactic. You're intergalactic. You're more paramount than every particle that makes up the Milky-Way-Galaxy."

Hiro didn't care about having said the most stupid thing in the history of earth. He'd just crossed a million lines. And he didn't care. 

Tadashi's chest stopped."That's the coolest thing anybody has ever said to me," he said. 

Hiro was out of breath. He didn't know why. Maybe he was going to stop any second, too. 

Hiro let his hand wander towards the bruise on his left cheek, right below his eye socket. Blue and lilac. It was too cold for his color scheme. It didn't fit into his smoother undertones. 

Morning light spilling through windowsills. Woodland adventures. Damp leaves crunching beneath yellow rain boots. 

A place that never let the night seep in. No blues. No lilacs. 

Hiro let the back of his fingers brush along the bruise, wishing he could just wipe it away like a color stain. Maybe he could make the memory disappear, too. The memory of a fist. 

Hiro swallowed. He leaned back and said, "Don't you dare grow your hair out." 

He was about to stuff his fingers under the blanket when Tadashi grabbed his wrist. He tugged Hiro's hand closer, running his knuckles along the shape of his mouth. Touches, grazes, soft little things that weren't quite kisses. They were more like that moment right before a kiss, that fraction where your nerve system let lose the tingles, and your whole entire body got ready for contact - for gravity to shift, for lips to meet and hearts to go bananas. 

"I think I might like you too much," Tadashi said. 

_ Complete batshit-fucking-bananas. _

Hiro laughed. It was loud and horrible. He didn't care. 

"I think you might be hitting on me," Hiro said. 

Tadashi smiled. Hiro could feel it on his fingers, in his skin and his bone and everywhere between his blood cells. 

"I think you might have started it," Tadashi said. 

"I think I might've." Hiro couldn't hear his own words over the beats in his chest. "And…I think I might like you too much, too."

"Too much for it be considered average?"

"Average…like 'friend'?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither."

Hiro flexed the back of his fingers against Tadashi's mouth. His knuckles bumped against his nose. 

"Your hand smells nice," Tadashi said. 

Hiro laughed. It was nothing but a high-pitched bark. 

"You're so weird." Hiro tried to rip his hand free, but Tadashi kept pulling it back. 

"No, really…" he mumbled. "Like…the beach."

"What?"

"Like summer vacation….or the Pina Colada Song," Tadashi continued. 

"The Pina Col - You have - " Hiro laughed. He choked a little."You have a coconut soap dispenser in the guest bathroom." 

"Coconut?" Tadashi gnawed at one of his knuckles. With his teeth and tip of his tongue. Hiro shrieked. He clamped his mouth shut. He wished his body would stop making weird sounds.

"I really like your hands," Tadashi said. He grabbed Hiro's other hand, and he held them tight, wiggling them around like he was playing Double Dutch. 

"I really like your hands, too."

_ And your mouth. And your cozy comfy cabin eyes. And your hair. And the cracking sounds your knees make when you bend them. And the way you close your eyes when a song gets to the really good part. And the fact that your eyebrows are practically roller coaster rides. And your feet. Especially your right foot. It always taps the same beat. Your beat. I like your beat. And your ears when you get super excited, because they wiggle around like Dumbo. And the top of your head that smells like a pillowcase. And the barely-even-there freckles on your cheeks. And the Big Dipper on the left one. And your snorts. God, your snorts. And the bridge of your nose when you get so embarrassed your face starts to implode. And there's this special place at the base of your rib cage that makes me want to curl into you and wrap you around like a blanket.  _

_ And your brain. Your brain is a cosmonaut. _

"Maybe we should just…leave it at that," Hiro said, eyes strained against the knots in their hands. 

"At what?" Tadashi's voice sounded like a lull, a doze, barely awake. 

"At this." Hiro squeezed his hands. Tadashi squeezed back. Hiro looked at him. Really looked at him. He didn't want to cheat his way out of any detail. Tadashi was this collective canvas of soft symmetry. Tadashi looked like someone had molded him out of pastel clay and careful touches, mild, like they'd been sure not to sharpen him too much. He looked like everything just melted into place. He looked like he could mold around you, like he could fit into every crooked corner, every dent, every crack, every one of your ugly little fractures. He looked like something that could mend you. Make you whole again.  

"I just - " Hiro swallowed. "I really, really like you, Tadashi." 

Tadashi's eyelids twitched. Tiny pulse. Electric currents. 

"I really, really like you." Tadashi's smile went small. "Hiro."

And there it was. His name coming out of the right mouth. Hiro's name was something simple, something fast. But Tadashi didn't say his name like it was something simple, something fast. He said his name like it was the most complex structure of syllables in the whole entire goddamned universe. And he said it like he could, like he was the only one capable of cracking it. Like he knew how to say it. There were four letters in Hiro's name, and when Tadashi knotted them together, it was like he was sure to make every letter count. Because every letter did. 

"Fuck." Hiro tipped forward, headfirst into that special place between Tadashi's rib cage. He was warm there. The softest curve. Hiro wanted to hide in his heartbeat. 

"I like you so much, it's crazy," Hiro said.

"It's not crazy."

"It's crazy. This is so crazy," Hiro said. 

_ Because I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. I think you might be one thing that's strong enough to twist me one last time. Upside-down. Inside-out. One more twist, and I'll break. One more twist, and I'm clinically insane. One more twist, and my heart goes ka-boom. _

"Yeah," Tadashi said. "Maybe this is a little crazy. But we can deal with crazy. Right?"

Tadashi gripped Hiro's shoulder blades, and he pushed him back a little, away from that perfect place below his chest.And like this, they were face to face. Tadashi smiled. His smiles were so much better up close. It was like staring straight into an eruption, something brilliant, something vast - something as monumental as the beginning of time. Tadashi's smiles were too big for his face. Too big for this universe. 

And Hiro wondered how this horrible world had managed to raise someone like Tadashi. Tadashi wasn't made for all of this down here. And yet here he was. Tadashi was real in the midst of this horrible place filled with horrible things and horrible people. And he wasn't any better. And he wasn't any worse. He was just real. He was the most real thing Hiro had ever let in. He was a figurehead stretched out into every natural disaster that had ever existed. He was a pillar of light in the middle of every blackout. He was solid. He was true. He was the only thing that was right. And Hiro wanted to keep the world from corrupting him. Hiro wanted him to stay like this. This was who he needed to be. He was more than enough like this. He was complete. 

"We are going to deal with crazy. You and me," Tadashi said. It was firm. He was standing his ground. No apologies.  

He looked so ready to do it, to let the world crash onto him - and to get back up again. 

Hiro nodded. Hiro nodded until he forgot he was nodding. 

"Okay?" Tadashi pressed a thumb into Hiro's forehead and wiped his fringe out of his eyes. A last curtain call. 

_ I didn't help.  _

_ I lied.  _

_ The seat belt wasn't stuck.  _

_ What have your yesterdays been like, Tadashi? _

"Okay," Hiro said. "Okay," he said again, because he wanted to make sure he understood. But he didn't. He didn't understand. 

And they were just going to leave it at that. At this. At whatever the fuck  _this_ was. They weren't going to talk about what or why or how or when. They were going to stop right where they were. 

At the edge. 

The fall beneath their feet. Safety behind their backs. 

Tadashi smiled. Hiro could feel himself tipping over. And before he knew it he was losing his balance. He was falling. He wasn't sure if he was ready for another impact. All he knew was that he was ready for something bigger. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy folks! So this chapter really packs a punch (HAHAHAHAHA I'm horrible)  
> It took me way too long for this! There's a lot going on over here. Like way. I need sleeeeep. And my brain isn't doing me any favors either. Every time I feel like writing, it's like, "Hey, let's google how to make silly putty at home!" Yes. I have made silly putty out of liquid starch. I wish I could show you guys. It's pink. It's Tadashi's post-fight-club brain. It's so cool! I'm a grown up. I think.  
> So...this chapter was more about the big eared snookums. I wanted to try something really chaotic for the whole entire martial arts school scene. I hope it didn't get too confusing. I'm experimenting :D Obviously, because this is me who's writing, Tadashi needed some angsty origin story with self-hatred and the need to mend a past that can't be mended *cue dramatic symphony* I'm terrible. I know. I cried at like 2 a.m. Oh Wonder was playing, and I was making dying animal sounds. It's moments like these where I realize that this fandom has taken complete control over my soul.  
> The next chapter might take a while. But I'll try my best to write like the wind! Hazzaah! (Get ready for the climax my fellow fandom companions!)  
> As always, you are spectacular. Have a spectacular day filled with spectacular events and rainbows and glitter randomly appearing in your lunch sandwich :) <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hazzaaa, I'm back, sorry for the long wait! GET READY FOR A WORLD OF PAIN!

Hiro woke up with an electric jolt that whipped his whole entire body towards the ceiling. He slammed a hand against his chest. Reflex. Instinct.

Thump-thump. Heart still moving. Heart still there.  


Hiro felt like he'd woken up from some really bad dream, everything still swimming in a sticky haze. Monsters and shadows and bad hands. The kind that shattered empires.

"Tada - Tadashi." Hiro cleared his throat, his hand slipping from his chest to his stomach to the rest of the bed, searching, roaming, hoping to grip something familiar.

Cold. Bed cold. Just one crooked little heartbeat.

Hiro snapped his eyes open. He twisted. He ripped the sheets from his body with a huff. It felt like they'd been trying to suffocate him, wrapped around his arms and legs one time too many times, trying to swallow him alive, bone and brain and skin.

He rubbed his eyes raw. Just a dream. Just a dream.

_ Hits and jabs. Meat hitting meat. I just really needed to see him. Coward. Too scared. Too weak. Seat belt. I didn't help. Hide, Hiro. Don't come out till I tell you to. Let me in, you fucking bitch. Safety hands. Losing balance. Canyons. Voids. Falling. Falling. Falling. Up, up  and away, Hiro. Up, up and away. I can't. I can't. I can't.  _

_ Falling. Breaching for impact. _

_ Catch me.  _

_ No.  _

_ Don't.  _

Hiro crashed back into the comforter, hands still dug into his eyes, trying to reach in and just rip them straight out of his head like pulling power plugs out of sockets. He squirmed. He didn't know why. He just trampled for a few shocks, tried to shake off whatever the hell was left of yesterday. But it held him tight, teeth stuck in his skin, memories building homes in his head, ready to stay for the long haul.  


The room was cold. Too cold. The window had been open the whole entire night, the world outside seeping in and coloring the room bleached and pale, the middle of a winter's day. Hiro didn't know how the heck he hadn't frozen to death. He felt snowed in. He could see his breath, white and ghosty. Tadashi's room was a refrigerator.

Tadashi's room. Tadashi's bed. Tadashi's sheets.

_ Tadashi. _

"Tadashi?" It sounded so pathetic. Hiro pulled himself up, spine curling, feet paddling. His nose felt numb.

"Tadashi?" Hiro already had both of his feet planted on the hardwood floor. Chilly.

Maybe he'd gone to the toilet or the kitchen or some place else - like the moon. Maybe he was gone. Maybe he'd evaporated because Hiro hadn't held him tight enough.

Hiro's chest started palpitating. Here we fucking go again. Tadashi just happened to not be where Hiro wanted him to be, and his brain was coming up with stupid conclusions.

Maybe he'd vanished.

That was still the most stupid thing to be afraid of.

_ Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Fuck. _

He was probably just on the toilet. Probably. Hopefully. 

Please. 

The bed creaked as Hiro shoved himself off of the comforter. He padded towards the stairs, hands pulling down his sweater like the drooping material could keep him warm. He stared down at his bare chicken legs that crumpled out of his loose boxers. He should've put some pants on before jumping into bed with him. But Hiro hadn't. Because Hiro was cheap like that - or just really prone to drowsy-coma-brain-activity. He couldn't think straight when he was tired. He couldn't think straight. Period.

And now, he was standing at the top of the staircase in Tadashi's room, pants-less and freezing and hoping Tadashi was just on the toilet and not gone for good, not wiped from the history of the universe. Because that thought made Hiro want to smash something or cry, or smash something and cry.

Hiro wasn't awake yet. Drowsy-coma-brain-activity.

"Tadashi?" Hiro rubbed his eyes with his hands, the itchy parts of his sleeves drooping over his fingers and fuzzing up his eyeballs. 

Hiro felt like some kid that had lost its parents at the mall.

"Dashi!" Hiro padded down the staircase, cautiously tapping over crooked boards, taking big steps like an astronaut.

There were sounds coming from the kitchen, clanks and shushes and whispers. Hiro reached the foot of the staircase and waited. It was some sort of habit he couldn't get rid of. Whenever he left a room, he waited, the way he used to when he was a kid. Don't just barge into every room if you know what's good for you. Wait. Watch out. Listen. Don't let them know you're there. Otherwise, something bad's going to happen. Something bad had always happened if Hiro showed up at the wrong moment, standing in the door frame while his parents hissed at each other in the living room or the kitchen or some other part of a home that was supposed to be homey but wasn't, one of them bawling fists, the other holding up something sharp, something scary, like a knife or Hiro's arts and crafts scissors. The one that cut out shapes when you trimmed through paper. Hearts or stars. Hiro couldn't remember. All he knew was that his dad had dubbed it the Fag Scissors.

Bitter irony.

"I just think it would be a good idea to see her again, Dashi."

Hiro had hardly recognized Cass' voice. She never spoke so quietly, pressing out things with caution like she was tiptoeing over hazardous territory.

Hiro pressed his back against the wall. He could feel a group of picture frames stab their edges into his spine. He pulled his sweater down. The hem almost reached his knees. 

"Cass, could you hand me the - yeah, that one, the plate. Thanks."

So Tadashi was in the kitchen, not the toilet, not gone. Hiro's heart relaxed a bit. 

Something was sizzling in a pan.

"Please? At least - " There was this loud whooshing sound, a big intake of breath. "At least give her a call. She knows you. She knows how to deal with you," Cass continued, voice still close to something that was barely there.

"No, she doesn't."

"Therapists tend to know their patients, Tadashi." Hard undertone.

"Therapy's not my thing. I thought we established that fact five years ago." Harder undertone.

The sizzling in the pan was getting louder, splatters and splashes making Hiro twitch like he was listening to firecrackers. You knew they were there, but you never knew when one was going to pop, so you jerked anyways.  _Pop. Pop.  _

"Then something else! Something that doesn't involve -  _ unnecessary violence _ . " Cass was using some sort of mom-voice, the kind that reminded Hiro of 'Go finish your brussels sprouts' or 'Curfew's at nine'. It was weird hearing that kind of tone come from Cass. It didn't sound right. Or maybe Hiro just didn't want it to sound right. 

He kept staring dead ahead, locking eyes with a ten years younger Tadashi holding up one of Cass' famous chicken wings, mouth triumphantly smudged with the sauce.

Hiro stared at the polaroid until his eyes started to tingle. 

"Obviously, you need something."

"Cass, I don't - I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to think about it or - Look, I'm 21. It's okay. I can figure this out." 

That was Tadashi's big-boy-voice, the one he used when he tried to convince himself that he had everything in order, the one that made him sound like the team captain of a losing dodge ball team, giving sweaty kids a pep-talk that nobody really cared about. 

"I know!" It was almost a shriek. Hiro heard a smack, like skin hitting skin. "I know you're 21! I know you're a grown-up who's - God \- almost finished with college, I -" More whooshing sounds. More splatters and splashes. "I know you can deal with your own life. I know you can take care of yourself! I know! I just, I want to be there. For you. I'm really, really, freaking trying. And I know I'm not them - I'm not - " Pause. "I'm not your parents, Tadashi. I know, I know that, but I just, I want to help you so much, and I - "

"Cass, please -"

"And I really, really, really, really care. I mean, I mean, like, you know that right? Right? I -"

"Cass!"

Silence. Splatters and splashes like firecrackers. Hiro could smell it now. Something salty.

"I know." More silence. Too much silence for too long.

Hiro snapped his eyes away from the polaroid, and he pressed his back from the wall, peering around the corner, that feeling of being a criminal getting headier by the second. 

The two of them were standing there, in that tiny hole-in-the-wall of a kitchen, hugging, sniffling, clutching at each other. Cass' face was stuffed into the crook of Tadashi's neck, Olive keeping him from reaching all around her. Cass' sniffling sounds drowned out the sizzling of the pan, and Tadashi's back was twitching like he was running on zaps.

Hiro rammed his spine back against the wall so fast he could feel a picture unhooking itself from its nail, threatening to slide down if his pressure weren't there to keep it in place.

This was none of his business. All of this was none of his business.

And he felt so fucking stupid jammed against the foot of the staircase, without his pants, trying hard not to breathe too loud. There was this thing in his chest that kept escaping him, drumming like it was trying to scurry out and ram into the hug that was happening one wall away. And as Hiro tried to count the sizzles coming from the pan, he couldn't help but look up and be kind of happy of the fact that, yeah, hugs like those still existed. Real hugs. The kind that was so much more than just a hug. The kind that pressed away all the bad things and left nothing but warmth and this feeling of being in the safest place on earth. 

Hiro knew those hugs. And he felt so pathetic for letting something so small get to him. 

Tadashi was getting a real hug during his all-time low. 

And Hiro really, really wished someone could've been there to have given him one of those when was hiding in his closet, listening to things a kid wasn't supposed to listen to, staring at that ABCs poster his mom had taped to the back of the door.

A like  _anger_.  B like  _bad things under beds_.  C like  _cold inside the chest_.  D like  _dig a hole and hide_.

But whatever the fuck Hiro had gone through in his life, that was nobody's business. His all-time lows. 

This was none of his business.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt like an intruder, someone who wasn't supposed to be here, listening, waiting, watching one peek at a time. 

Because he felt this pressure - almost a burden - and it was forcing him to feel like he was supposed to jump out from the corner like a wonderful surprise, stride over with his head held high, squeeze himself into the ball of arms, tell Cass that she was the most loving human being on earth, tell Tadashi that he was so strong, but if someone was giving him a chance to get better, then he should take it. Because Hiro hadn't gotten a chance. And of all people, Hiro knew what regret felt like. All he wanted was for Tadashi to get better. That was all he wanted. That was all.

And he felt like he was supposed to hug them. Because that's what you did, right? That's what you did? You hugged them both at the same time, squeezed them until a few ribs cracked and someone said, 'I can't breathe.'

That's what you were supposed to do. That's what Hiro was supposed to do. 

He was supposed to make everything better. Everything. With his arms and his hands and his crack-rib-pressure.

But Hiro shook his head. One shake. One quick snap of the neck. 

He was thinking stupid things. Drowsy-coma-brain-activity.

Hiro strained his attention back against the chicken wing polaroid. He counted the teeth in Tadashi's tiny mouth. 

They eventually started talking again, tones careful, phrases spilling over with a kind of warmth that made the air clumpy. Those were things Hiro wasn't supposed to hear, wasn't allowed to. But wasn't he supposed to? Wasn't he supposed to feel like he should part of it?

After all that had happened yesterday, Hiro felt like the world was assuming that he would help them to the bitter end.  

After all that had happened yesterday. 

Hiro still couldn't picture it, himself, doing all of those things, saying all of those things. Good things. Better things. Hiro wondered where he'd hidden that version of himself today. He couldn't find him in his brain, in his skin. Maybe things like that were supposed to be a one time thing. Like being your alter-ego for a day. Halloween for the soul. 

Hiro ripped the sweater back down from where it had climbed up his thighs. The Hiro from yesterday would've jumped out of the corner and said 'Good morning, now, what can I do for all of you?' The Hiro from yesterday wouldn't be afraid to help all over again. The Hiro from yesterday probably wouldn't feel like all of this was a terrible obligation. The Hiro from yesterday probably would've had pants on right about fucking now. 

But Hiro from today snuck back up to Tadashi's room and sat down on the edge of Tadashi's moon bed - until he crashed back into the comforter and let the sheets swallow him whole.

Hiro wanted to help. Hiro wanted to be there. Hiro wanted to stay. But it felt like nothing more than just a  _want_ ,  something bound by a duty, a contract, a commitment. It wasn't a blade-to-bark kind of  _I will help, I will be there, I will stay.  _

It was just an  _I want to because I'm supposed to._

Hiro felt like he'd promised something he couldn't keep. 

And how could that ever be enough? 

 

 

 

Hiro didn't know how long he'd dozed off. He wasn't really sure if he was supposed to go downstairs or wait for someone to scream his name up and tell him breakfast was ready. He really hoped they'd let him stay for breakfast. The only thing he had to eat at home was expired milk and a bag of Cheerios that had probably been open for more than a few months. Hiro could picture Mochi eating his sneakers. She'd probably already finished them off, moving on to the mattress or the blotchy curtains that were home to an unidentifiable insect race Hiro had dubbed 'The Chompers'. Because they chomped and made chomping sounds. Sometimes, Hiro thought they'd nibble on him, too, once they'd devoured the curtains. If they were faster than Mochi, that was.

Hiro stared up at the ceiling, arms and legs spread wide like he was about to make a snow angel. He didn't want to leave yet. He wanted to stay a little longer. Maybe an hour more - or two, three if he was really lucky and he asked really nicely, four if he begged on his hands and knees.

"How long've you been up?"

Hiro whipped his head to the side. He hadn't even heard the creak of the stairs.

Seeing Tadashi full frontal was like watching canopies open wide to let the light spill through, wake up the spaces below, keep everything alive with a beat.

Tadashi's shoulder was pressed against his closet, hands dug in his sweatpants, barefoot, hair a halo. He was smiling. A little. But it wasn't enough to make you forget about the bruise that had unfurled even more over night. It was dabbed with a bit of yellow. It made him look kind of corrupted. Bad. Frisky.

Hiro didn't know why he was feeling so guilty. 

He reached out, fingers going grabby like he was a toddler. Tadashi's shoulders twitched before he started strolling over.

"Not long," Hiro said.

And he wanted to say so much more, things that were helpful, hopeful, things you were supposed to say after all that had happened in the past 48 hours.

Tadashi had broken someone's nose on purpose. Tadashi had said he liked Hiro on purpose. Hiro hadn't gone into hiding on purpose. Hiro had thought about somebody else instead of himself. For once. On purpose.

But what were you supposed to say after all that?

Hiro just held his breath.

Tadashi reached the bed. He took his hands. He didn't grab them or snatch them or pull them. Tadashi  _took_  Hiro's hands, the way he always did. Hiro's chest opened up -  _pang_  \- and all the air just seeped through the cracks, washing him, rubbing him clean from the inside-out, from the outside-in.

Tadashi bent his knees, bones doing that lovely little crack-crack that should freak Hiro out but didn't. He loved the crack-cracks. He really did.

Tadashi thumped onto the floor, Hiro rolled closer to the edge of the bed, their hands still knotted ten times or more. It felt like a trillion, maybe even a gazillion.

Hiro opened his mouth, and he sucked in enough air, and he felt like he should say it all now, like, 'Cass is right. You should at least consider the whole therapy stuff.' or 'Can you please come closer, so I can hug you and crack your ribs?', but it wasn't his business. 

It was nothing but an excuse. 

And he'd always been so thankful for that, for other people's problems not being his problems. And - fuck \- he was so scared of this being his problem, too. And wasn't that the most messed up thing? Hiro wanted it and didn't want it at the same time. He didn't know. 

_ Do I want to fight my way into more chaos, take on more weight to haul over my shoulders, let my feet crumble under the pressure? _

_ Am I really ready for something bigger? Am I? Am I fucking ready?  _

Being the bigger person for a day was scary enough as it was. But being that kind of person for a week or a month or a year - or forever?

_ I don't know. I don't know.  _

He didn't know what to call it - this feeling - it made the world look bigger by the second, everything expanding, going deeper, catching more light, creating more shadows. It was like growing up all over again. 

The more you saw, the more you wanted to hide from.

"Can you stay a little longer? Until tomorrow? Or…maybe…until after tomorrow?" Tadashi was looking down at their hands dangling in the free space between them, a few inches away from the floor, a few inches away from their chests.

Hiro's heart did a triple-looping. It made him green and sick to his stomach.

"I - " He swallowed. "I have work."

"Over the weekend?"

"No. But, like, after."

"So you can stay, right?"

"My cat needs food."

"You have a cat?"

"What? Yeah. 'Course." Hiro didn't know why it felt like something definite, like people were supposed to know he had a cat. Because he did. He had a cat.

"Oh. Okay." Tadashi started scratching Hiro's knuckles with his nails, just hard enough for him to grip him tighter.

"Just bring it here. Cass likes cats. Leo loves them to the moon."

"Her."

"Hm?"

"It's a her."

"Okay. Her."

"Mochi."

Tadashi scrunched his eyebrows. Hiro untangled their hands and poked a finger into the bunch of wrinkles in the middle of his face. Hiro smoothed them out with a smile. He was happy Tadashi had his contacts back in. He could see his whole entire face like this. All of it touchable. All of it accessible.

"My cat. Her name's Mochi."

"Oh. Okay. Cool."

"She's fat and moody and loves to eat shoelaces."

"She sounds spectacular." Tadashi snorted.

"The  _spectacularest_. " Hiro smiled.

He let his fingers crawl lower, palm hovering over the bruise, that glitch in his skin tone, ugly blue, ugly lilac. He was hot there. Hiro didn't know bruises made your skin so hot.

"So, you'll stay?" Tadashi leaned into his hand, rubbed his face into his palm, the way Mochi did when her shoelace-hunger had been satisfied. And he was looking up at him with eyes bigger than the moon, and his mouth was a drop away from a pout, and Hiro wanted to pull him into his ribs, cradle him between his lungs, tuck him in and take him wherever he went.  

Just keep him inside.

_ Will I stay? _

Yesterday had felt like an 'Of course.'

Today felt like an 'I don't know.'  

"Of course," Hiro said, and he hated himself for it. 

Tadashi squeezed all his weight into Hiro's hand. Hiro was scared the pressure would be too much for that bruise, but the more he tried to soften it, the harder Tadashi pressed himself against it. He was dropping into Hiro's hand. Hiro caught him. Hiro had him. For now. 

"Cass says you have to sleep on the sofa, though. But she sleeps like a rock by ten, so…you know…"

Tadashi's eyebrows did the scrunchy thing. Hiro flexed his thumb, and he tugged at the corner of his brow, loosened the strain in the middle. It was kind of fun, just molding Tadashi's face into every shape and size like he was made out of pastel colored clay. Maybe Hiro could make him smile forever and ever and ever. Make his face incompatible with anything else. Make him look happy for the rest of his life.

Hiro just wished he could make him happy on the inside, too.

"How many guys have you snuck up to your bed?" Hiro asked, cocking an eyebrow, hoping he could do it remotely as well as Tadashi could.

Tadashi set his jaw with a click.

Hiro felt himself go hot just from thinking about it. The angry kind. Like he'd force Tadashi to tell him the names of each and every one of them, so he could go on a rampage, blow them all up. 

"Just Wasabi. In third grade. He used to have really terrible nightmares. Sleepovers with him were a challenge."

"Fuck." The heat in Hiro's gut smoothed over into something tingly. "You're so wonderful, it's pathetic."

"Thank you," Tadashi breathed into the center of Hiro's palm, right in the middle where it seeped in and hit his bloodstream like a drug. The world spiraled. There were these crinkles bunching at the edges of Tadashi's eyes, and Hiro knew he was smiling into his hand, lips flexing over his heart lines.  


"Tadashi?"

"Yeah?"

Hiro caught the word straight out of his mouth.

"Could you maybe - like, get me my pants?"

Tadashi's eyebrows smoothed out, and his mouth burst open into 1000 megajoules, yellow electricity forcing that bruise to retreat.

And it was the first time looking at it physically hurt, like all the light was scraping Hiro's skin open and digging its way into his insides. 

And the more Hiro tried to keep his eyes open, the more he remembered that last little blip before he'd fallen asleep the night before, like tripping when you lost your footing, thinking, 'I know I'm falling, and I'm gonna hit the ground, and it's really, really gonna hurt.'

Eating breakfast with them felt hazy. It was like Hiro was there, sitting at the table - but also not. He was split between two dimensions, body and brain constantly wavering between the edges. 

Feeling like this was dangerous territory, red-banned, hazardous, one wrong move and watch the world go boom.

It was twisting itself into that feeling from yesterday, the tingly one, the one that made him want to bench press double-decker buses, give somebody a heart massage, put on a super suit and save the world. And the thing was that he couldn't even consider it as something good. He felt the need to look over his shoulder every few seconds, because maybe something was coming out to get him and put him back into his place. He was running around with his head tucked low, bracing for impact, chaos, the end of the world. 

It was like the universe was bound to find out. It was probably preparing to fling another piece of shit at his face. Because that was what the universe enjoyed doing - fucking him up a little more than needed. 

Luck wasn't something that was distributed in a fair pattern. Either somebody had too much of, or too little. Hiro was part of the latter, that high percentage of fuck-ups that oozed into the atmosphere like muck and rats and parasites. 

Hiro was waiting. He felt so stupid for it. He was waiting for something bad to happen. Because it just had to. Something bad just had to happen. That was the way life worked - the way  _his_  life had always worked. It was some sort of ancient cycle etched into the constellations above his head, a predestination he couldn't run from. 

Hiro felt happy once, and then -  _bam_  \- he lost it. He lost it for good. He always lost it for good. 

Because he didn't know any better. 

Because he was too much of a chicken-shit to let himself know better. 

  

✦

 

 

When Hiro was a kid, he thought your dreams stained your sheets, the way sweat did or drool or tipped over milk bottles. Like, that was why you had to clean them once a week, the way his mom had, even thought they still looked clean, still smelled clean. Friday's had been laundry day. One plummet down the washing machine, and all the dreams mixed with the powdered soap, got lost somewhere between the tubs and the plumbing and all the black holes. He used to think dreams just leaked out from under your hairline, spread out by the roots and seeped into the cotton and those tiny crumbs that were stuck to the blankets from too much rubbing. And whoever lied on your bed could feel them, too - those stains, those leftovers, those memories of daydreams and nightmares.

Dreams in your sheets.

Tadashi's sheets were a hideaway. Tadashi dreamt the nicest dreams.

When they were in Tadashi's bed together, it was a sanctuary. It made Hiro feel like nothing else existed. He was in a special pocket of the galaxy, some place safe and sound where no bad thing had ever gotten a hold of him. 

"I love your bed," Hiro said. "I wanna live in it. Forever."

He hogged the blanket closer. Tadashi had brought up another one because Hiro had trouble sharing. Either one of them always ended up with their legs in the cold, one half numbed. It was not like they couldn't fit under one blanket together. It was just that they weren't really ready to squeeze themselves against each other to make it work. Or maybe it was just Hiro. Maybe Hiro was a little panicky about his whole entire body touching Tadashi's whole entire body, areas of his skin touching areas of his skin, areas he'd never even bothered thinking too much about - like stomachs and thighs and that place in the middle of pelvic bones. Hands were one fucking enigma, bodies were another. 

Tadashi's body: an anatomical mystery.

So now Hiro had his own blanket. And he kept referring to it as 'his'. He couldn't help it. It just happened. He'd been hearing that word a lot in his head lately. This was his, and this was his, and this and this and this and that. His brain kept clinging to things he needed to let go. He wasn't allowed to feel like this. He wasn't supposed to.

Tadashi stirred in his blanket burrito, a giant fluffy worm with a face, and he smiled as Mochi poked her nose out next to his chin. Because Mochi was crazy in love, and Hiro was crazy for being just a teensy bit jealous.

His head kept going. Full steam ahead. 

_ And this is mine, too, and this and this, oh, and that over there, yeah, and that and this - and him. Maybe. _

Tadashi rubbed his nose into the back of Mochi's head and said, "You'd have to share it with me, though."

_ I'd share my bed with you.  _

_ My bed. My blanket.  _

Hiro whipped his way out of his head like a slingshot.

_ No.  _

Tadashi was staring, waiting for something, an answer, maybe. But he hadn't asked a question. Hiro wondered what his face was doing, because whatever it was doing, it was making Tadashi's smile retreat, careful, a tiny creature going back, back, back into the crack you'd lured it out of. And without his smiles, you saw it - the bruise. Hiro hated looking at it. It made everything inside of him clench and go numb. Coiled. But he couldn't really feel it.

_ Am I really ready for something bigger? _

Tadashi rolled closer, and he was almost on top of him. Hiro mushed his face into the blankets. He couldn't look at him. Even through layers of cotton he was warm. Hiro could feel it, Tadashi's body temperature leaking through. Hiro couldn't stop himself from clutching at him a little. Just a little. Maybe he could get away with just a little. 

"I can't believe she actually likes you," Hiro said, trying to get his mind off of the scary things bawling at the back of his skull. Tadashi twitched once, probably assessing who 'she' was. Mochi pawed at Hiro's face like she wanted him to talk about her some more. She lived for the spotlight.

"She's so cute'n squishy."

"She's fat. Don't even know how that happened. She never eats the stuff I buy her," Hiro said, trying to fend off Mochi's claws that were trying to prick his skin.

"I really like her," Tadashi mumbled into the blanket - or her fur. It sounded like he was pressing his words into something fluffy.

"She's playing you," Hiro said. "She's the furry embodiment of evil."

Mochi kept mauling his face. She could probably understand humans. She could probably speak English, too. Maybe Japanese, as well. Or something crazy like Finnish. Mochi was definitely not a normal cat. They'd gotten her from that old lady, Mrs. Akiyama, who'd lived next door. She'd had an army of cats, and they'd made babies like crazy, so his mom had taken one in, the fattest one, of course. Everyone on the block had said Mrs. Akiyama was a witch, that she cast spells on naughty kids and made stew out of their fingers and toes. His dad had said she belonged into a loony bin. After they'd gotten Mochi, he'd tried to throw her out of the window twice, because she kept 'eating the fuck out of everything, that little cunt-bitch!' And when Hiro had said his dad was the one who belonged into a loony bin, he'd tried to throw Hiro out of the window, too, and Mochi had jumped across a lamp stand and attacked his face until he was bleeding everywhere. He'd kicked Mochi so hard Hiro could still hear the crack of that rib sometimes when he closed his eyes and patted her stomach, fingers nudging over that little bump on the left side. He'd said it was a joke - ' _I_   _wouldn't throw my own son out of the window, who the fuck do you think I am, huh? I love you, 'cuz I'm your dad! I'm your dad, Hiro. I'm your dad!_ '  - said Hiro was a pussy for pissing his pants, said Mochi was a little cunt-bitch.

But nothing had been a joke to his father. Nothing. Ever.

"She can't be that evil," Tadashi said, squirming his way out of his burrito. The blankets loosened around his shoulders.

Hiro flicked Mochi's pink button nose. She hissed.

"Yeah," Hiro said, flicking her nose again. "Sometimes…she's not that evil."

_ Sometimes, she's the best.  _

One more flick, and Mochi squeezed her way out of the blankets, google-eyes stuck to the glowing ball that was bouncing around the room, paws steadied for a pounce. Hiro took the opportunity to worm away. Maybe Tadashi wouldn't notice.

Mochi went full beast mode, crashing around the room like a lunatic. She was never going to catch that ball. Hiro was sure of it.

"Hi," Tadashi pressed into Hiro's hair. He'd rolled closer the second Hiro had tried to back away. 

"Hi," Hiro said, and he tried to shift his weight into the opposite direction. But Tadashi just rolled closer, all the warmth spilling over, leaking, gripping Hiro by the hem of his sweater and luring him in. And shit, Hiro wanted to dive into him, swim until his arms gave up and he settled into each layer of warmth below. Burrow his way into the bottom. Grow old in a safe haven. 

Tadashi smiled, and Hiro imagined that he could hear some sort of wind in his hair and his ears and the layers of his skin. Swoosh. And he could see timber and leaves and sleepy afternoon light falling through the folds of autumn canopies. Hiro knew the sun was going down outside. But not here. Here, it was stuck in a zenith with the deepest angle, tethered to a tip-over.

And this was all they'd been doing. Just doing this. Just lying around, mumbling stupid things while staring at ceilings, hands knotted. They hadn't talked about everything that had happened two days ago. They hadn't talked about what they were going to do next, what they would be next. If they'd stay. If they'd leave. And Hiro felt this urge to just hurry it up, throw them out of the confusion, get them into more trouble. But at the same time he felt like hiding from it, running away, even. They way Tadashi did the second you just so much as mentioned things like therapy or Anonymous Meetings or 'getting better'. He curled his hands into fists, and that bruise on his eye took over, made him look pissed off and ready to fight something. And then he ended up pulling you into the picture, changing the topic to  _you_.   Not him. Not the things in his head. And this was not the way Hiro had pictured all of this. He'd expected something to change, for both of them to realize some paramount thing that would alter their lives forever. For Tadashi to really open up and talk to him, bare to the bone. For Hiro to really open up and talk to him, bare to the bone. Maybe the conversation they'd had that night had been nothing but a dream.

A dream staining the sheets. A beautiful, perfect dream. 

It stayed silent for a while, nothing but their lungs moving and the tiny hisses of Mochi as she bawled across the floor. Hiro never knew what to do with this new silence that had been knotted between their chests for two days straight. It felt like static, heavy enough for it to rummage through his layers, something that was trying to crawl in and take over. And Hiro didn't know what would happen if he let it. What happened when you gave into rising cabin pressure?

_ Stay? _

_ Leave? _

"You okay?" Tadashi asked. 

_Are you?  _

But Hiro was afraid of asking. He didn't want to make Tadashi angry. That question made him angry. 

"Dunno," Hiro said instead. It felt easier being honest. Probably because Tadashi wasn't. 

_Say something. Anything. Just say something. Make me think of something else. Please. Please.  _

But then Tadashi's hand was hooked into Hiro's chin, holding him, keeping him there, thumb crawling up the small dip beneath his bottom lip. 

Hiro wanted to turn his head and look away, but Tadashi's eyelids dropped a fraction, and the whole entire world turned the color of his smile.

Their hands had found each other. Figure-Eight-Follow-Through. Hiro couldn't make himself let go. He felt himself falling forward. Forward. Tipping over. Falling. Falling. Falling. Into his lukewarm atmosphere.

Their foreheads bumped, noses bumping, too, and Hiro's brain felt so light, so heady. Kind of like that zing of a sugar rush or that punch of alcohol hitting your bloodstream, like,  _bam_.    


And Hiro felt himself go blind somewhere between Tadashi's smile and the October in his eyes. He leaned forward, their noses back to bumping, foreheads rubbing. And if Hiro flexed his neck just a little, he'd be able to find his lips in the yellow light. And maybe for a moment Hiro wondered what Tadashi tasted like. 

Peppermint tang. Firecracker laughter. Sweet with a punch. Sunday morning sunshine. The color of the moon. 

And Hiro kept losing himself, thoughts spiraling out of control, getting squishy and red and comatose. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing. 

Leave? Stay? 

Hiro had kissed people. He knew how to. He knew what to do. What not to do. But like this, he just wanted to lurch forward and eat his whole entire face, just freaking gobble him up, chomp, chomp, chomp. And that was horrible. That was not the way you were supposed to kiss Tadashi fucking Matsuno. Tadashi fucking Matsuno deserved to be kissed like he needed to know what his heartbeat felt like when it was in his toes and his fingertips, what a shift in gravity did to the branches in his lungs, what it sounded like when the solar system went blackout-still for millisecond. 

Everything went hazy, toes climbing, heart floating up his chest, head caught in an upward love landslide.

_Pang_.

Claws. Fur. A bouncy vinyl ball. 

Mochi trampled over their faces. Hiro's brain rebooted at light speed. Back online. And he could see it in Tadashi's face, too, this electric snap that made his eyes open, irises readjusting to all the new light.

Hiro ripped his fingers back. Tadashi ripped his fingers back. And they were both staring at each other, thinking, 'What the hell was that?'

It felt like Hiro was hitting the ground with a kind of impact he only knew from jumping out of first story windows and tumbling from dive boards above dried out pools.

"Sorry," Hiro said. Why am I apologizing?  "I - I thought you - I mean, I'm -" He rubbed his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

_ But I did. Did I?  _

Tadashi was looking at Hiro's chest. It felt like he was staring straight into his rib cage, searching for something, anything. His heart, maybe? The stuff in his lungs? Tadashi's right foot was twitching like crazy. He looked kind of lost. 

"No, don't be, okay? Don't. I - I just, I - " Tadashi's chest went up and down. Hiro wanted to put enough pressure on it to calm it down. Reverse-cardiac-massage. They were just lying there, waiting for something they didn't know was going to happen, listening to noise that wasn't even there. Everything just in their heads.

"I'm sorry," Hiro said, and he hated it so much more with it coming out of his own mouth.

_ I'm sorry? For what? For just wanting all of this to make more sense?  _

_ Leave? Stay? _

But it wouldn't have made any sense. Kissing Tadashi would've tilted the world a little more upside-down. Kissing Tadashi would've led to more wondering. Kissing Tadashi would've been, 'Hey, I don't know what the fuck this is, but this makes it permanent. Permanent confusion. Now, we both don't know how to leave.'

And Hiro needed to leave, right? Hiro needed a crack that he could slip through. To get out. Because that's what he always did.

_ Let go. Get out. Turn your back before it's too late to not get hurt. _

Kissing Tadashi would've really, really fucking hurt. And Hiro was a five-year old who believed that kissing was some sort of grown-up pinky promise, a pledge, a vow, a bare-to-the-bone agreement.

_ I'll stay with you for the rest of my life. Let's get married, and have a thousand kids, and live at the beach in Tahiti with a golden retriever called Andy. _

It was a kiss for fuck's sake. Kisses happened all the time. And they didn't lead to anything more paramount, nothing special. Nothing special. It was a mundane phenomenon in the real world. The grown-up world.

Hiro was a child. All his expectations of adult life came from old family insurance commercials and third-grade picture books, the kind with thick-rimmed cartoons, where suburban houses and white picket fences were part of the American Dream, where the 'Milkman' was a solid occupation and all the cars were giant, pastel colored Cadillacs. 

And it wasn't like Tadashi wasn't thinking the same thing. Otherwise, he would've just smacked his face onto his face, and they would've made out like hormonal jerk-offs. But they weren't. And they weren't even hiding the fact that they were thinking too much, lying on their backs and staring at the ceiling, over assessing the situation.

Maybe because it felt like a stupid time to do it - to go forward in something neither of them were sure about. Two days ago, they'd been in a hospital because they were both crazy. Two days ago, Hiro had decided that he really liked this person, really, really, really liked him. All of him. Even the darker parts. Maybe especially the darker parts. God, Hiro was so messed up. And freaking out. Really freaking out. 

And he knew Tadashi liked him, too. He'd said it twice. He'd said he liked Hiro's hands. His freaking hands. 

Wasn't this perfect? Because this was the perfect time to kiss. The best time. But they weren't kissing. They were doing the exact opposite of kissing. This was not kissing.  

They were just staring at the ceiling, over assessing, thinking the exact same thing: I'm scared of us being ready for more.

"I should go." Hiro was saying things before his conscience could kick in.

_ I always do this. I always run. I always fucking run.  _

Tadashi grabbed his arm before Hiro had a chance to crawl out of the bed.

"No, wait. I - Just, stay? Please?" Tadashi's face was slipping in an out of something, something hard and stiff and something tiny like a desperate child.

_Just kiss me already,  _ Hiro thought.  _ Just kiss me, kiss me, kiss me till I drop dead.  _

But at the same time his head was burning up, catching fire like gasoline, his skull going super-blaze.

_ No, don't. Don't touch me. Let me go. Don't touch me. _

_ Kiss me. _

_ No, don't you fucking dare. _

_ Kiss. Me. _

_ Dont. _

Hiro ripped his arm free. He felt like a child. He felt like a stupid child. Not a grown-up. Not somebody who was supposed to be capable of providing for himself, taking care of things, doing a man's work. He was a child doing childish things, thinking childish thoughts.

Hiro was a child.

"I have work tomorrow at seven. You know, in the morning and everything. So." He didn't even know how he managed to sound so calm. His voice was making Tadashi's face do something he'd never seen before. It sort of scared him because faces weren't supposed to do stuff like that. Scary stuff. Angry stuff. 

"I - If I'm home, I just have to walk a few blocks, so I'll get there easier, you know? But you know, I'd - I'd have to leave here at five a.m., and that's like crazy early, and I don't - "

_ That's the most pathetic excuse, and you know it. _

"Skip it," Tadashi said. He sounded blistering, a few degrees close to boiling. 

_ Here we go. Here we fucking go. _

"That's not the way things work."

"Just - quit. Quit your job.  _Quit_. "

Tadashi made it sound like the most simple thing on earth. Just quit, quit your job and la-dee-fucking-da.

"Are you for real?" Hiro didn't know what was happening, but the fire in his head started spreading, going lower into his ribs and his stomach, all the way down to his toes, eating the bed and getting ready to devour his room. 

No, not 'his'. Nothing in here was his. 

"Have you seen where I live? I need that job. I can't just quit."

"Then, I'll just," Tadashi shoved a hand through his hair, made it crazy-wild, "get you a new job. A better one! I'll get you a new job. Not that -  _place_.  It's not good. For you. It's not good."

Hiro knew that tone. It was the one that climbed down his sentences and made every word sound like it was the last thing he was ever going to say. The very last. Tadashi only ever did that when he was ready to fight, trying his best to hold it back, like some feral animal clawing at its cage. He was angry. Hiro could tell. Hair crackling. Heat in his eyes. And he hated how much it reminded him of that day. Of those hands. Of those hits. Tadashi had been getting angry faster ever since. One wrong word, and his body turned into a furnace. 

Hiro backed away without noticing. An inch. 

"What the fuck do you know what's good for me and what's not. You live here." Hiro jabbed his fingers into the bed. _ Here, right here. Right, fucking here. In this spectrum. With these people who love you. _

"What does that have to with anythi - "

"I've fucked up so much. I can't just quit my job and go work in some fancy-ass restaurant or an office - or some shit. Kurai's the only place I can be in, okay? And I - shit \- I really, really don't want to talk about this right now. No fighting, okay? Just - let's not. Please, Dashi. Please."

 _Not after all of this being so nice. Not after us almost kissing._  

And Hiro was getting so angry, so fast, and he didn't know how Tadashi's bed had turned from sanctuary to wildlife inferno. 

His muscles started bulging like something was holding him vice-tight, like there was this pressure wrapped around his insides, this thing that had been trying to make him explode for days. And it was happening now. This was it. Hiro didn't want it to happen now. Not here. Not with him. God, not with him.

Hiro wanted to kiss him so bad. 

_No, you fucking don't. Shutupshutupshutup._  

"Like what?"

"What?"

"What have you fucked up?"

"What have I fu - " Hiro sucked in as much air as he could and blasted it out in the next sentence. "This is what you always do, Tadashi! You never let go! I say no fighting, and you just keep going, and you just keep - "

"I'm not the one who brought it up! Why are getting so - "

"Brought what up?"

"The whole  _fucked up part_ , " Tadashi whirled his hands around like he was rearranging invisible cubes with brute force. His nose was leaking red, the color mixing with the blues and the lilacs of that stupid bruise. Some messed up color combination of anger and bad.

Hiro ripped his way out of the sheets. "Don't you see that we're getting really, really pissed off about something really, really stupid. Drop it! Please."  _ Please. _   


Tadashi didn't move when Hiro rolled off of the bed and onto the ground. Mochi was a few feet away, paws batting in the air, her claws millimeters away from the vinyl ball. Hiro was waiting for her to pounce. Hiro was waiting for the ball to go  _pop_.   

"Then why did you say yes?"

Hiro turned his head, flicked his eyes back to other eyes. His eyes. A good eye and a bad eye. The bad one looked like it was swimming in a lake, blue and lilac and pinches of yellow. It was the ugliest color - the yellow of bruises - worse than muck, worse than sulfur.

"Then why did you say yes to the whole convention thing? I mean, now you're saying that Kurai's the only place you can be in? How does that, how - What is that supposed to mean? What does that mean, Hiro?"

And there it was. A fizz. A pang. A tiny explosion in the middle of an empty space. There was this kind crack in every fight, like in the movies, where the couple fights over what color the soap dispenser should be in the guest bathroom, and then they keep fighting, voices getting louder, throats coiling, fists droning, until one of them snaps and realizes that what they're fighting about isn't the stupid color of the stupid soap dispenser, but something else, something deeper, aching, something dug into the foundation of everything they've built.

Why had he said yes?

Because he'd gotten so caught up in an idea. He felt like a child that wanted to get rid of a cold. And children didn't know how the real world worked, or maybe they just didn't want to believe in it. They built their own world where they got better and better and better, and they always, always won. They were champions in their own head.

That person he'd been two days ago wasn't somebody he could be for the long run. He couldn't be good like that for the rest of his life. That wasn't the way things worked. 

He couldn't make himself work like that. He didn't know how to.

And every time Hiro closed his eyes, he could see all the bad parts taking over. They always did. They always came when he didn't want them to. Flashes of images. Memories.  Reminders.

Hiro - letting Chess get ripped apart by that masochistic, power-hungry psychopath.

Hiro - not telling that girl in Kenta's apartment to make a run for it. 

Hiro - hiding in a closet while his mom stood her ground. Alone. All by herself.

Hiro - kneeling next to her on the bathroom floor, clutching the cold hand she'd curled around an empty prescription bottle, mumbling the names of all the constellations he'd learned by heart into her ears. 

Hiro - in a giant sweater watching the world go under without even trying to stem his weight against it. 

This was what it felt like to be close to waking up. 

"Because," Hiro said. And he said it with a downbeat.  Because. Just because.

"Because what?"

"Because, Tadashi!"   _Just because._

Hiro wondered if this was how wars started, how kingdoms fell, how heroes got killed by the villains. It went so fast, too fast, and you just went tumbling. Someone had turned the world upside-down with a quick snap. Now, down was up. Now, forward was backward. A few milli-seconds, and everything just swerved right back to something wrong. Because it always did. It was always just a matter of time. 

_ Because I didn't think about it. Because maybe it was never about that stupid convention. It just felt so good saying yes, just doing it, just thinking I could turn my life the right way round. Because I just wanted to try. I wanted to know what it felt like. Because I look at all of you, and, yeah, maybe I really want that. Because it looks so nice, and it feels so nice, and It wasn't thinking straight. And I didn't think about the rest. I didn't think about how it was going to happen and what would happen afterward. I just got so caught up. In this. In everything. In you. _

_ But this is me. And down is the only place I know I can be in. Down is the only place I know I can function in. Because that's the way it's always been. Because I've never tried anything else.  _

His head was filling up, voices going back and forth like pingpong balls in a bingo ball machine. And then Hiro could hear him, the scariest voice of them all. Hiro could hear those last words he'd spat out before he'd disappeared from his life forever. Those last words after he'd punched that scar into his left temple. Those last words before the blue lights had flashed outside of their apartment building. Those last words before those people in uniforms had come in with dirty boots and metal badges and guns. Lots of guns. Those last words before Hiro had watched his father go down onto his knees, hands in the air, sweating, crying, surrendering for the first time in his goddamned fucking life. Those last words before Hiro had been alone for good.

_ 'Just like your mom, Hiro. So scared. Always so fucking scared! You worthless piece of shit. Just like your fucking, mom, good for nothing! Just like her. Always too scared. Fuck you. Fuck you!' _

Tadashi's room spiraled, everything turning in orbits that wouldn't sync. Hiro wanted to throw up. He looked down. He had four feet, no, six, eight. The world was a dizzy circle. Two feet again. Then four. Hiro looked back up. Two Tadashi's melting into each other and splitting themselves apart again.

"Half of the school partakes in botfights, Hiro! We've had kids come from the worst."

The worst. He made it sound like he knew. Like he knew what it was like to come from the bottom, to come from nothing, to come from hurt and bad things. He didn't. Of course, he didn't. Spectrum people didn't know.

Tadashi kept going, his second self falling in and out of his dizzy image. "Hiro, It's not like they're going to - They don't care about backgrounds. SFIT has never cared about reps! I've told you that so many times. They care about what's in your head. That's what's important to them. And I mean, you can make a difference, okay? You can! That's all they'll care about. That's all that matters. I promise, that's all that matters. That's all that matters to them." He swallowed, and his voice went small when he said,"That's all that matters to me."

Hiro wanted to believe him, just because it sounded so nice, like a fantasy, like a fairytale. Tadashi was always so naive. 

"That's not the way the world works, Tadashi."

"Just because that's not the way you want it to work, Hiro."

Tadashi made it sound like Hiro was forcing his own pity on himself, like he was the saddest thing on earth. Which he was. He really, really was.

Because that was what he was doing, right? 

_ Find a good excuse to get out. Lie to yourself. Pretend you know better when you don't, when you don't know anything at all. _

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Hiro couldn't control his voice. It was some ugly mixture between a shriek and a tiny crack.

"You have this messed up way of seeing everything, and when," Tadashi was digging through his hair like he was trying to scratch an itch that wasn't there, but he wanted it to be, "someone tries to tell you otherwise, you get all riled up, convincing yourself that that's not the way things work. You need to start doing something about that! It's not good for you. It's bad, Hiro. It's bad. Look at what it's doing to you."

_Need_.  It was always  _need_  with Tadashi. Tadashi always knows best. You  _need_  to do this in order to do that.  _Need. Need. Need._

"I don't  _need_  to do anything!" Hiro wanted to trample something, make something dead with his feet.

"You're doing it again! You're shoving everything away! You love shoving things away, Hiro."

"It's my life, and I decide what I'm going to do with it. So I'll fucking shove it away if I feel like it." He felt like some shitty kid defending its pride in a sandbox.

"Not when it's bad for you." Tadashi looked like he wanted to throw something at him. Hiro tried to make himself look like he'd catch it instead of letting it hit him. __

"You're the one to talk," Hiro said, and he regretted it immediately. He was digging a bigger canyon between the two of them. He was making things worse. He didn't want to make things worse.

Then why wasn't he stopping?

"What?" Tadashi sat up straight, coiled, staring at him like he was saying, 'Say it. I dare you to say it again!'

And Hiro stared right back like he was saying, 'I said, you're the one to fucking talk, Tadashi!'

But Hiro wasn't. Hiro dug his hands into his sweater and looked at the ground and said, "Nothing. Nothing. God, let's just stop. Here. Please, let's stop. Please. I really don't feel like -"

"We need to talk about this. This is important. This is - I mean, this is your future."

"Here we go." Hiro's voice was nothing but a huff, a puff of hot, mean air. "You can't let go! Look, Tadashi, when someone tells you to back the fuck off, you back the fuck off."

_Just stop with your need and your this is important and your I always know better than everybody else. _

"You keep averting. You can't keep pushing all your problems away. How is that helping you?"

"Oh, I've been pushing all my problems away? Me? What about you? What about that fight? What about that?"

_ What about you and your hands and the issues in your head? What about you saying no to fucking therapy when someone is trying to hand you that shit on a silver platter? What about you lying to yourself? What about you trying not to deal with something that is bad for you? What about you projecting all your shit on me, convincing yourself you have to fix this, when you're stalling to go fix yourself?   _

_ What about you and the seat belts? What are you not telling me? _

And was this it? Was this what it felt like to be ready for something bigger?

_ 'We can deal with crazy. You and me.' _

Doing it was so much harder than what it sounded like. 

"That's not fair," Tadashi said.

And all of this felt so pointless. This was so fucking stupid. And all Hiro had wanted to do was kiss him. That was it. But it wasn't. Because he didn't actually want to kiss him. But he did. He didn't. He really did. He didn't know. 

"We're talking about your future," Tadashi said. 

Hiro set his jaw with a crick-crack. The sound made his back shiver.

"That's not fair?" Hiro scoffed. He actually scoffed "What about your future? What about you." 

"At least I've got something!" 

It was a snap. It was angry. It was red. It made Hiro's chest go mute.

Mochi hissed, and she scrambled under the bed too fast for Hiro to really see anything other than a fat blob. Tadashi's eyebrows went from angled to scrunched to soft to high to 'oh fuck'.

"Screw you," Hiro said.

And then he ran. He always ran. If someone were to write about Hiro's life, 'copious amounts of dramatic running sequences' would be stuffed somewhere between the parts about the fluctuating levels of self-esteem and the super fun collection of bad decisions.

_ Run. _

"Hiro! Whoah, little man, what's up? What happened? Hiro? Hiro!"

"Hey, Hiro! Wait!"

That's all Hiro could hear. Leo's voice. Cass' voice. Not Tadashi's.

That's all Hiro could hear. Leo's footsteps. Cass' footsteps. Not Tadashi's.

And that was it. If Hiro would've really, really wanted this, he would've turned back. He would've kissed Tadashi, would've kissed Mochi, would've said, 'Okay. You're right. Let's just try this! Let me show the world what I can do!', would've finished that last goddamned algorithm, would've been the kid who came from the underworld and stood his ground - would've not run away. But Hiro didn't know how to be the person he'd been two days ago. This was the real Hiro. And the real Hiro was a piece of shit who ran and ran and stuffed himself into closets and stared at ABCs posters. 

A like  _anger_.  B like  _bad things under beds_.  C like  _cold inside the chest_.  D like  _dig a hole and hide_. 

He didn't have a better reason. He was being a piece of shit because he was always a piece of shit. He just ran because he always ran.

The same old vicious cycle.

Round and round and round.

He ran. He ran out of the house. He ran out into the cold. The sun was going under, the world was going dark, and the whole entire sky was the color of his bruise. 

Blues and lilacs. Memories of a fist.

 

✦

 

 

Green. So green it should be labelled hazardous. 

Toxic. Radioactive. Green. 

He was slumped against Wilson, the bumped up car squashed beneath the fire escape of Hiro's apartment building. The image reminded him of those old Greasers movies, where guys in leather jackets and slicked back hair smoke their lungs to crisps, feet crossed at the ankles, bodies leaning against their beast of a four-wheel drive. Except this image was less flashy, less everything, like someone had accidentally spilled acid over it, everything oozing out of context, that green blob of hair trying to fight against the bite of the liquid. 

Chester - alive, breathing, looking like hell had spit him back out because that fucking venom-hair had infected all the fire pits.  

Toxic. Radioactive. Green. 

And it was the first time Hiro felt some sort of relief to see it, crackling through the night like a beacon, fending off all the things lurking in the corners.

Hiro couldn't help but think of that time in bio class where Mr. Kato had talked about how some creatures in the Amazon wore bright colored skins like armor to warn predators, to send a message, 'Bite me, and I'll kill you.'

_I'll fucking kill you.  _

"You piece of shit!" Hiro felt himself shout, throat tensing up, tandems quaking, but he couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear his own voice. Just thunder in his head. 

He was loaded. Today had been nothing but a shitstorm. 

"You piece of - motherfucking -  _shit_! " Hiro trampled towards him, and he wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until his head tumbled, wanted to smack the green right out of his hair, wanted to hurt him and hug him at the same time. 

"Where the hell have you been? Where the - I went looking for you! You left me with fucking Bee for, like, forever, didn't even bother telling anybody, and I was looking for you! Shit, I went to look for you. I - "

Hiro caught himself before he said something stupid. Chess would flip Hiro off if he were to say he'd been worried. Not that Hiro had been worried. Of course not. Of course not. Right? Of course not. 

Because now he was standing here, and he didn't know if he was happy to see him - or angry or sad or ready to make him regret for ever leaving. All he knew was that Chess was right there, Chester, a few feet away, as real as he could ever get. And it felt like he was the last thing standing between Hiro and chaos, the floodgates to the underworld in those sliced up hands that would never stop shaking. 

Chess didn't move, arms dangling, legs quaking, mushed against the hood like the car was the only thing keeping him upright. Hiro stepped closer, fingers tensing like he was getting ready to reach out and touch that stupid hair of his, feel the coarse bleach burn his skin away. 

The smell hit him: sweat, alcohol, dirty highs, soggy leftovers. 

Hiro sucked in as much air as he could and stepped closer. He wanted to curl his fingers into his shoulders, feel their sharp angles dig their way into his skin. The urge made him almost feel nostalgic. But the more Hiro leaned closer, the more his eyes adjusted. 

Chess looked like those dead animals squashed into asphalt, flattened by wheels and heat waves, bones sticking out in crooked angles, bad meat. 

"Chess?" Hiro stopped with enough space between them. Just in case one of them would pack a punch. You never kew with Chess. You never knew with Hiro, either. The real Hiro. The one who lived in this pit of a place.  

"Fuck, Hiro. I need, look, man, I need cash," Chess said, voice all thick smoke and sour milk. 

Hiro swallowed. It was the loudest sound he'd ever heard, saliva clumping up and crawling down his throat in thick beads. 

Chess was done for. Really done for. 

"What?" Hiro barked, a dog ready to bite something. "You kidding me?"

"Hiro…just - ah, shit -  _please_ ,  man!"

Chess tumbled forward. Hiro tumbled back. Chess was sweating, all of him leaking down the center of his chest, staining his ripped up jacket in a capsized triangle. It was too cold for people to be sweating. 

"No," Hiro said. "The hell did she do to you, Chess? What the hell did she - "

"I need, I need just a little, okay? Just, like, a fucking tiny amount, okay? Just something. Anything. Please."

Chess rammed his way into his atmosphere, hazy, thick, toxic green. Hiro dug his hands into his chest, shoving him off with a hint of a punch. A warning.  _ Don't come closer.  _

But Chess never gave up that easily. 

"No. Fuck no. You need to stop. You need to stop,  Chess!"

And the more Hiro let himself hear his voice, the more he felt like he was tipping over, falling out of something, falling into something else. Something so familiar it hurt. His life. His reality. This was it. And 'this' was not the way he wanted it to go.

This was the next big blow. 

Hiro was tumbling from a castle in the clouds, and now he was here. Down here. Way down. And it felt like he'd been living on a bucket-load of LSD, crashing from the best high of his life, falling to his knees -  _bam, splat_  \- in front of Chess and a metal carcass called Wilson.

This was reality. And in reality, Chess was a junky and Hiro was sad. They made the perfect pair. Coked up and fucked up. 

Chess dug his hands into his hair, white knuckles going crunch, crunch, crunch. He looked so breakable. One pound of the wind and he'd deteriorate into molecular particles. Hiro held his breath just in case, clamped his mouth shut, scrunched his eyes. He didn't want him inside. 

"Look, Hiro. Hirooo… Swear to god, wouldn't - " Chess ripped his fingers out of his hair. He stumbled. Hiro tried to keep him steady, but Chess bared his teeth like something gone feral.

_ 'Bite me, and I'll kill you.'  _

"Wouldn't be here. Don't wanna be here. Just a favor. Favor. 'K? A favor."

"A favor? You think I'm gonna give you something, so you can mess yourself up some more? I told you this would happen. I told you. I toldyou. I told you. Because of course she was going to dry out your stash, Chess. What the hell did you think was going to happen? She's done with you. Now, she's just playing with you. Just - fucking accept that for once! You're done."

Chess' face glitched up, parts of his features slipping, twitching, constantly rearranging themselves like some giant Puzzle Craft field. 

"Fucking shut your mouth." Chess jammed a finger into the air. Hiro swore he could feel it, a sharp pressure right in the center of his rib cage. "Shut it, Hiro! You have no, no idea! You don't know! Okay? You don't know."

Hiro knew Chess like this. This was his all-time-low-self, the one that couldn't keep his pokerface stick, skin cracking to show you what was underneath. Bad. Broken. Hungry. Everything peeking out at you, begging for you to do something about it. 

"You're right. I don't. I don't know anything." Hiro kicked a pebble against Wilson. Chess twitched when it crashed through a shard sticking out of one of the windows. Empty, like eye sockets."Because you just - You were gone. You disappeared. Because you haven't been to work for weeks. Because I haven't seen you in forever. And Blake - fuck, Blake - stuck a help wanted sign to the door. Gonna fire your ass, Chess! She's going to fire you. Do you even get that? You can't afford to lose another goddamned job, man."

Hiro slowed his pace, tried to make each word louder than the next, building, building, building. He needed the syllables to crash through that haze Chess was stuck in.  

"I can't go to work," Chess said. He stuck his salt desert eyes to Hiro's shoes. Hiro shuffled back like he was trying to rip them away, snap the connection.

"What? Why? Because - Because - "

"Because look at me. Take a good look at me, Hiro. I can't."

Chess was back to staring at him, both of his hands jabbing holes into his own chest. And Hiro could feel those, too. The jabs. The pounds. The dirty-rimmed nails cutting crescents into his skin. Half moons on a foggy night. Wolves starving, waiting, howling. 

Chess' face was hollowed out like someone had scooped the meat away, leaving nothing but sharp peaks and caves, landscapes of a dead man walking.

And all Hiro could think was, 'This could've been me if I'd stayed.' 

It was all his fault. Chess had brought all this shit upon himself. And now, he was back here, begging for Hiro to help him, and Hiro would feel sorry. Hiro was always the one to feel sorry. Hiro was always the one to cave. 

He wondered what that said about him. Him, caving, always caving, always giving in, giving up, letting everybody else win while he stood at the side lines and took the punches, always the one to stay stapled to a treadmill while the rest of the world turned in real-life circles. 

Always the one to just take it. 

His dad had said Hiro was a watcher not a doer. Real men were doers.  _What's that say about you, Hiro! Huh?_  - Smack - _Listen to your dad when he's talking, you little piece of_   - Smacksmack -  _Look at me! What's that say about you, Hiro? Never gonna be a real man, am I right?_  - Smacksmackpunch -  _Just letting those kids beat you up. When I was a kid, I made sure everybody respected me!_  - Fingerjabtothechest -  _You got that? Respect, Hiro. Make 'em respect you. With your fists, Hiro. Your fists._  - Punch -  _Hiro! Hiro, you listening to your dad? Are you listening to me, Hiro!_

"Hiro!" 

Hiro whipped his head back up, world going floozy. 

"So, please, man. Please. Just a little. Come on. I helped you back then. I've always - always had your back."

Chess was back, his hair bursting through Hiro's territory. He was tipping over and leaning back, going up and down, up and down. 

And when Hiro scrunched his eyes real tight, he could see it. Normal Chester. Chess. Chess like the game. The kid who'd fixed up Hiro's hands so many times he'd lost count. The kid who'd let Hiro hold him when he'd been wasted and sad, fingers digging into his back, holding on, just holding, no questions asked. The kid who'd pulled Hiro out of each and every mess no matter how many punches he'd had to take. The kid who'd forced Hiro to leave, screaming at him, bawling, saying he needed to get out before he ended up just like him, 'Because you deserve it, Hiro. Get out while you can.' 

The kid who was right in front of him now, hurting and tired and bare to the bone, forcing his body to deteriorate at light speed because he knew it was too late for him to leave anyways. 

_Fuck. Here we go. Caving. Always caving. You're not giving him shit. You're not giving him_  - 

"No. No, I'm not giving you anything, Chess."

Chess kicked his heels into the asphalt. Hiro swore the earth quacked for a beat. 

" _Please_.  " It was practically a mewl, a guttural thing begging on its hands and knees, tugging at this piece in Hiro's chest that crumbled under pressure and shared embarrassment. Hiro wondered if this was what was left of people in the end. At the bottom. On the verge of extinction. Maybe this was that charred amount of leftover, sucked dry from every last ounce of dignity. Hiro didn't know if he was relieved for Chess having pushed him out before this could've happened to him, too. Maybe it would've been a good thing. Hiro would've just seized to exist. He would've been able to just cave, to just take it without so much as a second thought. He could've been the best watcher of all time. 

Hiro swallowed. He was letting his bad thoughts take over, the ones that clawed at all the good thoughts, bullied them into corners, beat them up, ate them while they were still alive, squirming. 

Hiro shook his head. He snapped his spine straight. 

_Don't let all of this get to you._  

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Hiro's voice was too soft for this atmosphere. "Is she worth it? Is she? Is she worth it, Chess?"

Hiro took a step towards him with each word. Chess' head swayed, a miniature fracture of a smile tugging at his miniature fracture of a mouth. He looked like he was about to laugh at a nasty joke someone had made about him, a defeated, 'Yeah, yeah, you're right, I'm a fucker. I'm a loser. I know. I'm done.'

"You're the one to judge,  _Hamada_.  " 

Hiro jerked at the name, his whole entire body was working to make him forget about that thing even touching his ears. 

 _Hamada.  _   


Bad blood. Bad bloodline. 

Chess' mouth clamped shut, the pale in his eyes going hazy-wild, getting high on gut-punching Hiro all over again. 

"You of all people, man! Look at you! Where you been? Church? Fucking church, Hiro?"

Hiro wanted to charge. He was ready, body flexing and tensing for a big pounce. The biggest. Everything gone with a leap and a shred of his fingernails. 

"That has nothing to do with - "

"Really? Because it looks like you're in just as deep as I am."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Aw," Chess purred, eyes thinning out, going feline. "Pretending like he doesn't have a fucking clue. It's him, am I right? It's him! That perfect little prep kid from the shop? What did he tell you, Hiro? What did he tell 'ya? Like, 'I'll get you out of this horrible, horrible place because I love you'?'

Chess forced his voice into some sticky sweet glob of a pitch. Hiro could feel this brawl in his head, this haze of kicks and fists growing, searing down his spine, spreading out and taking hold of his hands. His hands. His bad Hamada hands. 

Hiro tried to loosen the fists that had formed at the base of his arms. But they wouldn't calm down. He needed them to calm down. 

_ Don't listen to him. He's wasted and stupid, and just - don't listen to him. You're getting angry. Breathe. Just breathe. Don't let it take over.  _

"It's not like that. It's not - "

"I'm right, right? You think he's gonna - what - like, save you? You're his little charity case. You're fucked, Hiro. Just as fucked as I am. So stop lying to yourself. Wherever he's from, you don't belong there. I mean look at you, Hiro. Just look at yourself. Look at your brain! Daddy's a psycho, and mommy swallowed a fucking shit-load of pil - "

"Shut up!" 

_ Don't listen to him. He's wasted and stupid, and just - don't listen to him. Don't listen.  _

"You have no idea what's going on in my life, Chess. Don't you dare - "

"Do yourself a favor and stop lying to yourself. Grow up with all that fuck-up in the background, and you're same as everybody else. Ain't no room for being different, Hiro. Like -  _fuck_! " Chess spit it at his face, slices coming out of his mouth. He was close enough for Hiro to feel it pierce his skin. Sharp saliva. "We've got all these issues, man. We're all wrong in the head!" Chess' fingers cradled Hiro's skull, and he whipped him around a few times, whipped him good, whipped him whiplash. Hiro couldn't keep himself upright. This wasn't him. This wasn't the Chess who'd told him he deserved better. This wasn't the Chess who'd saved him from everything bad below his feet. This was not Chess. This was Vanessa, tucked inside of his head, eyes tearing through his, trying to grip Hiro back.  _ Come back, Hiro. Come back. _

"Backwards, you know? All fucked up, Hiro! We're all fucked up down here!"

Hiro was expecting Chess to burst out into cackles, eyes bulging, knees wobbling, body crunching forward like the weight of some joke had made his head heavy. 

_ Don't listen to him. He's wasted and stupid. Don't listen. Please, don't listen. Please. Please. Please. _

"All fucked up." Chess coughed, and then he was crying. Chess was crying. "All…" Sob. "Fucked…" Sob.

Hiro felt this numbness take over, the kind that only kicked in when his brain stopped fighting. He just sort of let it take him, let it all come crashing down on him, swallow him, reduce him. He felt like a child all over again. 

Little Hiro. 

Little Hiro hiding in closets and the spaces under beds. Little Hiro growing up and ditching P.E. to get high under the bleachers. Little Hiro now, running into his apartment and collecting the last few scrapes of cash. 

Little Hiro - the real Hiro - handing Chess a fist full, saying, "Here you go. Now, get lost."

What if he hadn't changed enough? What if he was going to let it all come back down to this? 

Maybe because he always let it come back down to this. This. This version of himself. 

Maybe because he never fought back hard enough. 

_ Too scared. Too weak. Coward.  _

_ Hide. _

 

✦

 

Hiro stared at his phone. Twelve missed calls. Half of them were from Cass. The other half was from some unknown caller. But none of them were from Tadashi. Nothing. 

And he felt like Tadashi would be the bigger person - the way he always was - and he'd drive over to the tweak shop with his scooter, and he'd give him Mochi back and pull him close and kiss him like a cannibal, and everything would be back to perfect. Because in Hiro's fantasy, they made out in a way that made everybody think they were going to gobble each other down. Because in Hiro's fantasy, he didn't do anything but wait. Because in Hiro's fantasy, he let Tadashi do everything. Like always. Like fucking always. 

_ Too scared. Too weak. Coward. Hide. Don't come out till I tell you so. We're all fucked up down here.  _

_ All fucked.  _

Hiro gripped into his hair, fingers digging into his scalp, pressure creating enough pain for the things in his head to shut up for a second. But they came back like slingshots, hit him, pounded him, beat him up. He was nothing but a piece of meat. 

Hiro stared into the scratched up mirror. The linoleum lights in his bathroom made him look like something out of a nightmare, some place cold, barren, where everybody looked like a shadow wearing a face. He'd tried to smoke something - the leftover pot he'd stuffed into the cracked cupboard above the stove, the one with the cat claw marks and the rusty hinges. But smoking had just made him feel worse. A bad kind of high, the kind that made you want to throw up and eat something at the same time, the kind that made you sweat and angry, the kind that made you scream at your own reflection until some pissed off neighbor tried to break down your door to make you shut up. 

So Hiro had flushed it down the toilet, but all the green had bubbled back up from the bottom, swimming around in the stained porcelain pond like dead fish.  

Hiro lifted his hair out of his eyes, and he forced himself to look at his reflection, really look at it, with his foggy brain and the remains of his angry-coma-high. He'd expected something to have changed. After all of those months and weeks and days and hours of effort he'd put into living a life that he was supposed to have. A dream. The fun thing about life was that you could dream all you liked, but when you woke up -  _you woke up_.  You just fell right back into the place you'd started in. It was like running without getting anywhere, feet stuck to this thing that made you spin in circles. Hiro poked at the pockets beneath his eyes, puffed and dark. He didn't know what he'd expected. Maybe his face should've brightened up, scars smoothed over, eyes polychromatic like solar flares. Like their eyes. Spectrum-people-eyes. 

But he still looked the same, sad, close to crumbling, used one too many times. Like his parents. 

Hiro looked like his father on a good day - and his mother on a bad one. His face was this messed up mixture of mended and fractured. 

Or maybe he was just forcing himself to see that. He loved doing that. He loved pitying himself. It was easier than all the other options. 

Hiro could hear Tadashi's voice in his head, spiraling like a broken record. 

_ 'You have this messed up way of seeing everything, and when someone tries to tell you otherwise, you get all riled up, convincing yourself that that's not the way things work. You need to start doing something about that! It's not good for you. It's bad, Hiro. It's bad.' _

His dad used to say you didn't have to work for pity, you just got it handed like that, like,  _here you fucking go_. But admiration -  _now, fucking admiration, kiddo_!  - that was something you had to really sweat for, work yourself down to the bone. His dad used to say shit like that when he'd felt real proud of himself, when he'd talked himself into believing he'd done good with his family, when he'd been really drunk and ready to smash something. His father had loved lying to himself, too. It ran in the family. The evil Hamada genes. It was a vicious cycle that kept repeating itself. Maybe it was a curse, some ancient voodoo thing that preyed on their sorry little bloodline. Maybe Hiro's kids would get gut-punched by it, too, and maybe their kids and their kids after, every generation going under like a cracked ship at sea. 

Hiro spit into the sink, hoping all the shit in his head could glob up in his mouth, so he could just spit it out. Spit it all out. Get rid of it. Wash it down with acrid tap water. 

Everything in his bathroom was acrid. Everything in his apartment was acrid. Everything in his building was acrid. 

His. 

This was all his. 

His and acrid. 

Hiro hated himself for all of it. He'd kept waiting for something to come and take all the good things away. But it hadn't been 'something'. It had been him. It always came back to him. 

Hiro was taking away. Because he always took away. 

He'd been stupid for thinking it would've been the others. Maybe he'd thought that because it made him feel better. Because that was so much easier. 

But being your own demise, was as bad as it could get. It was a cycle. 

_ Hiro loved - Hiro forced himself to let go - Hiro lost - Hiro loved - Hiro forced himself to let go - Hiro lost _

Again and again and again. 

Round and round and round. 

Hiro always, always, always lost. 

On bad days - the worst days - she'd hidden in his closet with him, knees tucked against her chest, arms wrapped around herself, and she'd told him that he was just like her. That she knew his eyes too well. That he got caught up too quickly. That he loved more than he could handle. People like them were supposed to lose. That was just the way things went. And so she'd taught him the number one rule of survival with a heart like theirs, a rule she hadn't been capable of following through with because she'd said she wasn't strong enough.

_ 'Leave. You always have to keep moving. Otherwise, this will happen. All of this. And this is not what you deserve. You deserve so much better, Hiro. So, so much better. So don't forget, okay? Don't forget. Always keep moving.' _

Hiro slumped onto his bed, and he dragged out the cigarette packet he had tucked beneath the pillow. And wasn't that the most messed up place to put your cigarettes? Cigarettes you didn't even smoke because you didn't actually smoke? In your bed? Under your pillow?

Nicotine dreams stained his sheets. 

 

 

 

Those moments after the run were always the hardest, those few beats in time where your conscience hit you like a freight train. And your heart was loud. And your head was making the earth quake. 

And you were standing at the edge, wondering  _what if_. 

The past 48 hours had been the worst post-run Hiro had ever gone through. He felt like he'd caught something, a cold - or the first hit of an epidemic. Sad and sick and shaking, wrapped into his sheets, bad sheets, stained with bad dreams, nightmares, an empty cigarette packet stuffed under the pillow. His lungs were factory grounds. 

Hiro stared at his phone until his eyes were burning. 

 

** Message from Cass Bear - 8:23 p.m.:  **

 

_ Pls call back asap!! _

 

**Message from Cass Bear - 8:37 p.m.:**

 

_ Am worried _

 

**Message from 415-509-6995 - 11:12 p.m.:**

 

_ Hey champ! It's me Leo. Again. Cass is going crazy. Me too. Went to the place you work at but you weren't there. Just need to make sure everythings okay? Call back as soon as you get this. Please.  _

 

**Message from Cass Bear - 1:02 a.m.:**

 

_ IM JUS REALLY WORRIED HIRO CALL  _

 

**Message from Honey - 10:32 a.m.:**

_ Heyho! :)) Soooo i'm still totally counting on you to show up on friday!!!! It's ma beedaaay! Seriusyly hope you didn't forget :D Dont bring any gifts just bring yur pretty face! K loveyoubye <3 _

 

**Message from Gogo - 11:56 a.m.:**

 

_ The hell did you to him. I swear to fucking god i will hurt you if you dont straight this shit out.  _

 

**Message from Gogo - 11:58 a.m.:**

 

_ Come to the party. He'll be there. And if not  _

 

**Message from Gogo - 11:59 a.m.:**

 

_And f not i hope you can pack a fuckin punch._  

 

**Message from Cass Bear - 2:32 p.m.:**

 

 _Hiro?  _

 

He couldn't make his fingers do anything. He couldn't make his mouth talk and his head quiet. All he could do was stare with his eyes slipping in and out of some sort of hazy blind spot that turned the world into a blur. But there wasn't much left to be blurred. His room was dark, curtains pulled against each other, the chompers chomping through the material. He wanted to stuff Mochi against his chest. But he'd left her there. He'd just left his cat behind. Who the hell does that? Who the hell just leaves their cat? Then again, she was probably way better off over there. Hiro didn't even know how she'd managed to survive in this shithole. Nothing but shoes to eat and catnip she didn't even like and a kid who didn't know how to take care of himself.

He wondered what she was doing right now. He could picture her gnawing at the row of shoes stacked next to the bookshelf of Tadashi's room. He could picture big hands picking her up and pulling a leftover shoelace out between her teeth. Big hands. He could picture her tiny button nose bing squished against a big, big chest. Maybe she was lucky. Maybe she was being pressed against that special place at the bottom of his rib cage, that little indent that was shaped like a flexed-back bowstring or that pointy notch at the bottom of cartoon hearts. You could hear him breathe the best from that spot. You could hear everything inside of him tick like clockwork, the gear teeth sliding into their slots, hour hand, minute hand, running circles, round and round and round.

But that was just in Hiro's imagination. In his imagination, he'd hurt Tadashi in way that he could fix. In his imagination, he could just pry his chest open and reach in with a screwdriver and a pair of tweezers and just fix everything from the inside-out. The way Hiro had fixed those malfunctioning Grandfather clocks last year. 

A little oil here, a little oil there, rearrange this part, take the broken one out and put a new one in it, screw it a little tighter over here, loosen it a little over there. 

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. 

They wouldn't have had that stupid fight if people could be fixed with screwdrivers and tweezers. Hiro wouldn't have run away if people could be fixed with screwdrivers and tweezers. 

And maybe Hiro wouldn't have existed if people could be fixed with screwdrivers and tweezers. Maybe he would've just been some faraway liquor-on-a-friday-night idea of a teenage girl who's head was stuffed with stars and dreams and the name of every astronaut who'd touched the moon. 

Hiro curled himself into a ball. Like a fetus. Like something that had come out of a womb. And he wondered why you had to leave the most safest, most warmest place on earth, just to exist out here. In all of this. 

Was all of this really worth it? 

Hiro tightened the grip on his body, scrunched himself into something even smaller. And maybe for a moment, he pretended that he could remember what it had felt like being inside of someone who loved you more than anything else in the world. 

He wished he could turn back time, make his limbs shrink, erase his heart from all the tears and ugly dents, squeeze himself back under that spot beneath two lungs that moved the same way his did. Beneath a heartbeat that moved the same way his did. The same heart. 

The kind that got caught up too quickly. The kind that always loved more than it could handle. The kind that wasn't strong enough.  

Just like her, he couldn't leave.  

 

**Message from Cass Bear - 3:01 a.m.:**

 

_ Hiro _

 

 

✦

 

He always came crawling back. Maybe it was because he just always caved, always gave in to some itch, some withdrawal. The same way he couldn't stay away from cigarettes. He didn't even smoke. But maybe it was time to just admit that he did smoke. Even though he didn't. He didn't smoke. But he did. 

Hiro curled his fingers around the lighter bobbing around in the pocket of his hoodie. 

He didn't smoke. He did. But he didn't want to. 

Honey lived in the suburbs, smack-dab in the middle of white-picket-fence-cells and carbon copied real estate, with creepy garden gnomes reigning over their kingdoms of clipped front lawns and chlorine pools. 

Copy-paste. Copy-paste. Copy-paste.

Everything looked the same. And Hiro couldn't shake that feeling of being in a dream where he was running but not getting anywhere, just shuffling around in circles, the landscape never changing. 

It was dark out, the days being cut short by the winter months. Everything was slicing you up. The air and the snow and the ice stains on the streets. 

Hiro kicked his pace up a notch, the board sending vibrations up his legs. His shins were starting to itch. He shifted his weight so he went faster. He didn't like the stares the people here were giving him. High-alert stares, thought processes rattling in their heads, trying to figure out who he was and where he lived. He could practically smell it in the air, some sort of sticky sweet thing that reminded him of housewives gathering around polished ink-drop tables, getting drunk on pink wine and gossip, shit people said to each other when their backs were turned. 

His mom had come from the suburbs. She'd ran away as fast as she could. Hiro never knew why. She'd never told him. He'd never known her parents. But who would want to get to know the kind of people who'd refused to take their grandson in right after he'd lost everything in his life? 

Bad blood. Bad bloodline. Hiro was a mixture of bad genes. 

Nobody could miss house number 45 on Wilber road. Hiro kicked his board to a stutter tempo, watching grown-ass kids run around with bottles thrusted into the air, shiny hair beaming under all the lights that looked like a million rainbow streamers dangling from ropes. There were Christmas figurines scattered behind the fence, outlines traced with more lights, dears and giant candy canes and stars and one big Santa in a slay. One gloved hand bobbed back and forth in a never-ending wave. 

House number 45 on Wilber road looked like it had given birth to Christmas. A messy water birth. Hiro wondered how crappy it must be to have your birthday a few days away from Christmas. Like, wouldn't it be annoying for people to try and give you a birthday and a Christmas present in one? Like a snow globe with a birthday cake in it or a batch of B-Day cinnamon cookies or a calendar with Christmas elves wearing birthday hats? 

But by the way house number 45 on Wilber road was the only house lit up like the fourth of July, Hiro was pretty sure Honey loved it. He was also pretty sure she'd decided to decorate everything herself. He could picture her tumbling around the lawn with mile-long power cables, trying to figure out how to connect all the lights and make their house visible from space. 

Hiro sort of missed Christmas. But he'd stayed away from it for a while. Christmas was a family thing. 

So he didn't see the point. 

Hiro unbuckled his feet, trying hard not to smack his face into the squeaky clean pavement. He stuffed his board into a bush between two houses. A cat with a neon pink color crawled out beneath the twigs, big button eyes staring him up and down before darting into the next bush. 

Hiro kicked a pebble after it. He really missed Mochi. He needed to go pick her up. But he couldn't stand the thought of Cass locking him into a room and telling him he was never going to get to leave until he told her what was going on. She'd called him five times today. Leo four times. Even Wasabi had called him. Wasabi didn't like calling. Ever. Said it was too awkward and he had to write down everything he wanted to say first before picking up the damn thing. 

Nothing from Tadashi. Zero.  

Hiro pretended like it didn't hurt too much. But it did. It hurt. 

Hiro shuffled towards Honey's house, hands curling around that stupid lighter. His thumb wouldn't stop scraping over the sparkwheel. 

He didn't smoke. 

 

 

 

It didn't take him long to find the others. They were in the kitchen. A dozen people were watching Wasabi turn Honey upside down and lifting her over a beer keg. Fred was sprawled across a counter top, face in a fishbowl of smoke, shoulder slumped against Gogo who was sitting next to him, all open and flushed as she took another sip from one of those red solo cups. She was smiling - actually smiling - with her teeth and everything. She looked younger with a smile on her face, like a little kid in the middle of a candy shop.

Hiro skimmed over the small crowd that was huddled around the kitchen island, but he couldn't see him.

No cardigan sweater. No baseball cap. No October eyes. 

And Hiro didn't ask where he was when Honey finished her stunt, wobbling towards him and wrapping him into a tight hug. She tried to lift him, but she only got him onto his toes. He gave her his present. Yellow socks with those frilly things around the loop. Hiro sucked at presents. But Honey smiled, pearly whites stained with a little pink of her lipstick, and she kissed his cheek, the smack of it louder than the techno music that was blasting his ears away. Hiro tried to smile, but Gogo was giving him looks. Her kid-in-a-candy-shop smile had disappeared. She folded her arms in front of her chest, and her eyebrows flicked down into the steepest angles. Hiro looked away. He could feel her stare blast his skull to bits. She slid down from the counter, movements slower than usual, a little uncoordinated. Hiro made a run for it. He told Honey he'd be back, asking her where the toilet was while he turned on his heels and stormed out of the kitchen. He couldn't hear her answer over the crowd and the beats of the music.

Hiro wove himself through the hallways and rooms, pretending that he wasn't looking for him, flicking his eyes to the floor when he met the stare of strangers wearing baseball caps. Hiro didn't even know baseball caps were a thing. Baseball caps. Fucking baseball caps. 

Honey had never told them what her parents did. But whatever it was they did, they did it well. Hiro couldn't make out much of the house in the house-party-low-lights, but everything that caught his eye was polished, clean, fancy, like a miniature version of the White House, some place important people lived.

Hiro's head sunk down a fraction. It was a reflex, trying to make himself small the second he felt like he didn't belong. But he lifted himself back up, and he pulled his hands out of his pockets. Out in the open. He could stand tall - even if he didn't belong. 

Hiro slipped around a corner and shuffled through a smaller hallway, less people, less noise. The hem of his sweater got caught on a pot plant dangling from the narrow ceiling. He cursed, fingers trying to get the twigs out. 

Hands around his arm, heart jumping, feet skidding back -  _bang_  \- against a doorframe -  _pow_  \- against a bookshelf - _shudder_  \- and the door shut. 

October Eyes. 

He was looming over Hiro, towering, caging him in, both of his hands jammed against the hollowed out space above Hiro's shoulders. He could hear Tadashi's fingers curl their way into the spines of the books behind him.

Tadashi had him cornered against a shelf in a blackout room with the world shut out. 

And all Hiro could think of was that scary text from Gogo. 

_ 'I swear to fucking god i will hurt you if you dont straight this shit out.'  _

But Hiro didn't know what to say, what to do, what to feel. Angry? Sad? Scared? Fucking crazy in love?

Everything in his head was too quiet for him to understand. Because that's what Tadashi did. One step too close, and Hiro's just brain shut off. He malfunctioned, everything in his system trying to coordinate, organs and neurons and the spaces between, transmitters hurling themselves off course, going back and forth, and fizz and pang and bump, bump, bump. 

Tadashi turned the world upside-down. Topsy-turvy. 

They were both breathing. Fast. Really, really fast. And they weren't even moving. They were just standing there, weight shifted against the shelf because they couldn't keep themselves upright. Hiro knew Tadashi couldn't keep himself upright. He kept swaying. He smelled like American Spirit and sticky-sweet chasers, Coke or Sprite, or both -and liquor, the heavy kind that burned down your throat and made everything inside of your stomach evaporate. 

_How much have you been drinking? You don't drink. You don't drink that much. You never do. You're always so careful. Look at yourself. You can't even stand straight. I don't like you like this. I don't like myself like this, either. I want to apologize. And I want you to apologize. And I want to leave. But I can't. Because I tried, and I can't. I didn't even have a real reason. I just left at the best fucking moment. Because that's what I do. I go at that perfect, perfect moment because I know it couldn't get any better after that. And I never want to let myself stay long enough to watch it get better if it does. I never want to let myself stay long enough to figure out all the rest. I love doing that, you know? Just disappearing. Because it's so easy. It's so fucking easy. Just doing the same thing over and over again. It's easy. It's routine. And the fucked up thing is that I was always so afraid that  you _ _were going to disappear. When it was actually me. Me. All me. It's always me. And that's a scary thought. Just being in the center of everything. Being the reason for everything. Being all that's left on earth when it stops rotating. Being so lonely. Just being. Just being me._

_Me._

But Hiro didn't say a word. All he could say was nothing. 

"Hiro." That's all Tadashi said. Hiro. Just Hiro. And he didn't say it like he was going to say more. He wasn't sucking in more air to get ready for something bigger. He said it with a full stop.

"Hiro," he said again, all lost and done for. Hiro. Just Hiro. Hiro with a downbeat. 

And Hiro's chest was doing this thing where it was shriveling up, something going dry and sucking itself into the center. Hiro swore he could hear the crunch of it. Everything squeezing. Everything pulling itself into the smallest particle. 

_ Say more. Say more. Say more.  _

_ Say more because I can't.  _

Hiro had his eyes ripped open, big and going dry fast. Tadashi was fending off all the light that was streaming through the window behind him, little dots flashing white and red and green. Christmas colors. But they didn't remind him of Christmas. All Hiro could think of was a white lid of an empty prescription bottle, and the red splurges on Tadashi's knuckles at the hospital, and that tiny green clip his mom had used to tuck her fringe to the side when she was strong enough to face the world. 

White and red and green. Memories. Reminders.

Hiro looked down and tried to find his feet. It was too dark to see them. All he could make out where the slices of light cutting around the edges of the door and leaking over the floor, shadows moving past the corridor outside, laughing and drinking and slurring along to the next song that was making the house vibrate. 

Everything out there was caught up in a turmoil. Everything in here was motionless.The two of them were standing in a tiny speck of the cosmos where the earth was too heavy to rotate. 

Tadashi's face was nothing but crumpled eyebrows. He looked so sad, and Hiro wanted to reach up and flatten the bunch of wrinkles that had collected in the middle of his face. But he didn't want to make him smile, either. He couldn't handle one of Tadashi's smile. But he couldn't handle seeing him so sad. He couldn't handle seeing him at all. 

Tadashi leaned forward, the squeak of his sneakers making Hiro's breath hitch in his throat.  

And then he cradled Hiro's head, and he bent down - and then he was kissing him. Tadashi was kissing him. On his cheeks and his forehead, sloppy things over his eyelids and his ears, puffs of breath across the tip of his chin and the slope of his nose. 

"I'm so - " A butterfly here. "Sorry. I mean, I -" A smack there. "Really care. I care. I care. I care. Hiro. Carecarecare…" A string of pecks going from Hiro's forehead all the way down to the spot above his chin, right under his nose. 

Tadashi's mouth hovered over his own, just stayed put with enough air in between to breathe. And Hiro was ready to give up. Because his brain was shut down, and there was nothing left, and nobody would judge him. Nobody would push him for leaving and running right back. He was a fuck-up. He did fuck-up things. And fuck-up things never made any sense. But he was a fuck-up. So he did them. Over and over again. 

Hiro let his toes climb, spine sliding across the sharp corners of the books. Tadashi gripped his head tighter like the rest of Hiro's body didn't exist, like he was just a skull and a face that you could cradle like a baby. 

"So sorry. So sorry. I care. Care so much. I'm, I'm like this - because this is what you need, right? This is what you need? Younnn…You make me feel like I'm the person who's supposed to fix you. Everybody expects me to fix. And, and, and when you're done with me, with this, with you - you'll leave. You'll just go. And you did. You just left. You just left. Don't."

Tadashi was never the one to blurt. Everything he said went through a filter. Everything he said made sense. He always caught himself before let anything else slip. And now the alcohol was fogging up his brain, and he was letting everything tumble out into the open. 

Hiro slammed his feet back into the ground. Tadashi's hands dropped. His mouth was too far away to reach. 

_You make me feel like I'm the person who's supposed to fix you_  .

 _I'm the person who's supposed to fix you_  . 

 _Fix you_.  

 _Fix_  . 

_You_. 

Hiro had wanted to be the only thing standing between Tadashi and all the bad things in the world. He'd wanted to be his white blood, his flood wall. Hiro hadn't thought about himself. Hiro hadn't thought about how he could hurt Tadashi just as much.

Sometimes, Hiro could be a bad thing, too. 

"I never -" Hiro shook his head. "I never meant for you to. Never. I - " 

Tadashi rubbed his palm over his forehead, over and over again, like he was trying to wipe something away. And his face was scrunched. And his eyes were closed. And his warmth wasn't close enough to grip. 

"Because I'm always, always trying to understand you," Tadashi said. "And you keep - keep shoving me away. You keep -   _shoving_.  You. You keep backing off just to come at me like nothing ever happened. I mean," Tadashi's hands were batting through the air, jumbled and uncoordinated, giving up one trying to make sense,"you're up and you're, you're down. And I don't know what to do. I want to be there to help you, but you just keep -"

"Help. Help and saving. There's a difference. It's never just helping to you," Hiro said. He walked towards him, steps cutting through the void they were stuck in. He stopped right in front of Tadashi's chest, right under his chin, right between his pocket of warmth and the winter chill. "You don't owe the world anything," Hiro said. "You're wasting so much energy - so much  _time_  on something you can't get back."

Hiro could hear Tadashi swallow. He could see it on his throat, this slow bob in the lowlights. Tadashi was all soft gesture and silhouettes. Hiro found his hands, dry and warm and so perfectly his. He gripped into him until the pain started to bawl. But he ignored it. He ignored everything. His pride and his anger and all of those bad things behind his flood-wall-spine and inside of his head. 

He craned his neck, just enough for him to see Tadashi's eyelids, closed, shutting the world out, shutting Hiro out.

"You can't fix your own problems by fixing others," Hiro breathed right into the tip of his chin. 

Tadashi's eyelids lifted themselves a fraction, crescents letting his eyes leak through, like he just woke up or he was just about to fall asleep. Something in between. Something that reminded Hiro of bedtime air.

"You can't fix yourself when you keep expecting others to do it for you," Tadashi said. 

And all Hiro could feel was this explosion in a vacuum. And then there was nothing. Nothing in his ears or his eyes or his lungs. 

This was so scary. Having figured each other out without having to dig any deeper was so scary. You weren't supposed to know these kinds of things about people. This was deep. This was a crack that broke through the cores beneath their feet. Deep. Down. All the way at the bottom, there was this. 

And this wasn't something you could just get rid of by turning your back and running. 

Hiro didn't know who moved first, but then his face was slammed against Tadashi's chest, and their arms were wrapped around each other, and Hiro could feel Tadashi's mouth on the crown of his head, inhales and exhales. And they slid down, down, down, until they were slumped on the floor. And they were just sort of sitting there, holding each other, legs tangled, arms wrapped around their bodies one too many times. 

And he was touching him everywhere, contact and breaths and all of his heat.

_ I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.  _

 

 

 

Hiro didn't know how long they stayed like this. Tadashi's breathing had toned down to a shallow flow, and his body had gone slack somewhere between Hiro's mental apologies and the techno music toning down. He was asleep. Hiro could feel it. And he didn't care about all the weight he had to stem himself against. He could take it. He was going to try and keep him upright. 

Because this was Tadashi. 

This was Tadashi without a smile on his face. This was Tadashi without the stage, without a show, without the crowd. This was Tadashi with his eyes closed and all the lights turned off.

Tadashi without the world watching.  

_ This is all of you. This is you with me. And this is all I'm asking for.  _

 

 

 

Gogo found them. Hiro barely registered her hands tugging him up and away, saying soft things, doing soft things. It was so unlike her. Death-ray-eyes Gogo was being so nice. 

'Let's get him onto the couch, Hiro. He's done. You, too. You should go home.'

Gogo kept talking. But Hiro kept shaking his head. He didn't want to let Tadashi's hands go, because he couldn't, because his hands were Hiro's hands, too. All his.  _ All mine.  _

They pulled Tadashi onto the leather couch next to the window. They'd spent half of the night in an office, oak and dark leather, the Christmas lights seeping in and painting everything white and red and green. 

Gogo touched the back of Hiro's head, and it was weird having her sharp hands skim through his hair. But he let her do it again because it toned down his breathing, made his heart drum slower. 

Gogo smiled a little, just a little, and she said,  ' _F_ _ive minutes._ ' A nd Hiro smiled a little, just a little, and he said,  ' _O_ _kay_.'

The door closed, and the world was shut out, and Hiro sat down on the floor, right at the edge of the couch. He pressed his ear against that special place at the bottom of Tadashi's rib cage.

He listened to him breathe for five minutes and a half.  

Tadashi's rib cage held each and every galaxy. 

 

✦

 

Hiro switched his phone off the second he got back to the apartment. He didn't look at all the messages and the missed calls and the reminders of how much of an asshole he was. He shut the world out all over again. Just for a bit. Not for long. 

He yanked the lighter out of the pocket of his hoodie and hurled it across the room, watched it pang against the stained wall like a bullet. Everything was dark in here. Everything was the same, empty and used, stained by time and remnants of bad decisions made on a whim at two a.m.. He didn't know why he'd expected the whole entire world to change with him. He didn't know why he'd expected everything around him to follow suit. 

To change while he did.

And Hiro didn't even know what it was. He couldn't pin it down. He could just feel it, this brawl in his abdomen, this buzz in his system, like he'd just stood up after being hit by a car. He was pure adrenaline. Everything beating faster. Everything beating louder. Everything he'd been trying to ignore for hours, days, weeks, months. 

Hiro ran into the bathroom, and he jammed his face up against the scratched up mirror. He stared at himself until his eyes started to leak right out of his head. And of course, he couldn't find anything. He looked the same. He looked messed up and done for, the way he always did. And he looked down at his hands, and they were sliced up and scarred, the way they always were. And his arms and his legs, everything attached to his particle-tiny body, looked the way they always did. Like his being had gone corrupt while his face still looked like it belonged to a child.

Because of course, he still looked the same. And he felt so stupid for having expected something to have been magically altered: face looking clean and less blotchy, muscles bulging like some athlete on an overdose of steroids, hair shiny, teeth straight, spine pulled towards the sky, all high and mighty. 

But Hiro looked at himself, and he couldn't find someone with a spectrum-smile. He couldn't find someone who was perfect and healthy and mended. He couldn't find someone who'd been healed by some God-given miracle. 

All he could see was himself. Hiro. Just Hiro. The real Hiro.

_Me._  

And the real Hiro had frizzy hair and chicken legs and a giant canyon-gap between his teeth. The real Hiro had a terrible case of word vomit and hated to admit that - yes \- he smoked, and he drank, and he had this talent for spiraling into his own self-destruction because he had a taste for the badlands. The real Hiro was up and down and back and forth. He changed his mind like his thoughts were readjustable options on a Wheel of Fortune that lacked all fortune, rigged by voids and bad decisions. He did things, and they never made sense, not to anybody, not to himself. Never to himself. 

And the real Hiro had never been the kid who'd helped grandma's over streets, who'd cashed in smiles like they were tokens or gold stars, who'd raised his hand in class so the teacher's bull's eye one row down didn't have to be picked, who'd stopped and gone out of his way to please and help and do good deeds. The real Hiro had been the kid with the busted lip and the broken knuckles, who'd worn hand-me downs a few sizes too big, who'd skipped class to try cigarettes in the girl's gym locker room, who'd started fights with kids twice his age, twice his size, twice his rough red rage. The kid who'd jumped into a dried out pool from a four meter diving board just to know what it felt like. To break something. To figure out if he could harm himself more than his family could. He'd been the kid with the busted lip and the broken knuckles, three fractured ribs and splintered ankle bones, crooked brain and hollow thoughts. 

The real Hiro had been the bad spawn no mother wanted their kid to play with, the shadow fracture at the jungle gyms, the blind spot at the back of the class. 

' _That Hamada boy's bad news. Family's bad news. Bad. Bad. Bad_.'

_ Fuck you. Fuck all of you. You don't know me. None of you know me. I don't even know me. And I don't want to. If I ever met myself, I'd run, and I'd hide, and I'd pray to God I'd survive the night.  _

But this was it. This, right here. The person in the bathroom mirror was the real Hiro. The person in the bathroom mirror was Hiro Hamada. 

Hiro scratched his fringe to the side, let his face crawl out into the open. 

_Nice to meet you, you asshole_ Hiro thought, and he watched his features blotch up into a blur, cheeks hot, eyes spilling over. And he was crying, and he was smiling, and -  _fuck_  \- his life was so messed up. 

Hiro curled his hands into the rim of the sink, the cool touch of it making his skin numb.

This was him, and that was okay. He was okay. Because he'd said yes. He'd said it for a reason, on purpose, and he couldn't deny that. Because maybe all he'd wanted was something to change. Something. Anything. And this was it. All this. But it kept spiraling back because he wasn't fighting hard enough. He wasn't pushing enough. He needed to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. Fuck the cycle. Fuck the bloodline. Fuck it. Fuck him and all the bullshit he'd done. 

Hiro wiped his eyes dry, but they kept fogging up and leaking, and his nose wouldn't stop running, and -

" _Fuck_!  " Hiro kicked his foot into the trap of the sink. He flinched, cursed some more, got it out, got it all out of his system. And he tried again. He tried looking at himself. Splurgy cheeks and wet nostrils, hair sticking to his face. He pealed the strands away. Everything shaking. Everything shedding, crumbling off, crumbling away. Everything beneath peeking through. Everything beneath out in the open. Everything. 

He was okay. It was okay to not be a hero 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was okay to try and fail and try again. It was okay to lose your footing. It was okay to be a little fucked up. It was okay to not be ready yet. It was okay. 

He'd find his own pace. He'd grow on his own time. 

_You're not your yesterdays. You're not your father.  _

_You're Hiro. The real Hiro. And you are enough.  _

 

✦ 

 

Hiro took the broken bot out of his trash can, and when he held it in his hands - he knew it wasn't broken. 

 

✦

 

The pits were full, bursting at the seams, pulsating like something that lived, something that moved as one, worked for something bigger. Everything was in the throes of adrenaline. Hiro could feel it like a bass, so low it was tugging at his skin, playing with his fingertips. It was taking his hand, leading him down. 

Down into the levels below the earth. 

Hiro kept his hair out of his eyes, hands free from his sweater. He wouldn't let anything touch him. 

He hooked his fingers into the straps of his backpack, held on tight, kept it close to his back. He could feel it breathing against the zippers, his creation.

Most of the cages were occupied, hovering a few feet above the magnetic panels, metal rattling, bars molding around the two fighters and their bots like the duels were happening in separate dimensions. 

Neon cubes gone airborne. 

The crowd was prowling around the battle grounds like hyenas sniffing out dead meat. They were glowing beneath the black light: stripes of hair illuminated, neon tattoos peeking out beneath ripped up leather, fake contacts piercing through the dark in beacons, shoes splattered with color stains. Shapes and contours traced by a blaze. Even now the pits looked like a work of art, this corrupted collection of fractures and neon. And even now Hiro could still feel it, this rush that was zooming into his gut at light speed. 

_Fight. Fight. Fight. Win. Win. Win._  

You escaped down here - life, time, everything. You felt like you were cheating it all, like this was some secret glitch in the system that only you knew about. And it made you feel powerful, thinking you could exist in different territory, lower ground where no one could touch you. You had a chance to be real somewhere else. Somewhere where you were a champion.

But in the end, cheating was cheating. It was just a matter of time until the world caught up to you. 

"Cage D3 - Round 2 - Duel over. Winner, Lou Kenta."

Hiro snapped around when the robotic voice burst through the speakers, electrifying the crowd around him, everything twitching, screaming, trying to get the voltage out of their systems. A smaller cage to his left hovered back down into its slot, mystical, bars glowing blue-electric, metal flooring polished like a pond, this gate to a world of pain, descending. A mechanical whirr made his spine shiver as the floor of the cage connected with the platform below. And then there it was, Cage D3, home to Hiro's very first botfight. His very first win. Beginner's luck. 

The crowd started to cheer louder, louder, louder, fists punching through the air, mouths ripped. The top of the cage popped open like a tupperware lid, the metal slamming up against its slot in the ceiling of the warehouse. The blue of the bars fizzed and snapped before sinking down into the flooring, like neon liquid being drained down glass pipes. 

Everything cracked open to reveal the winner, Kenta, his long teeth brighter than a full moon, triumphant and silent, standing in the middle of what was left of the cage. He thrusted both of his hands into the air, shadow-fingers curled around pieces of a severed bot.  

Junk-yard dead meat. 

The crowd went feral when he threw the pieces into their hungry mouthes. They were mean tonight, loaded with something that hadn't reached its climax yet. Vanessa must've increased the amount of rigged fights. She used to say fluctuation was key -  _'Toying with the crowd's emotions. That's where the real fun begins, Hiro. It's just a matter of time until you'll understand.'_

Hiro curled his hands into fists when he thought about his first downfall. The pits weren't a place you wanted to lose in. You couldn't afford to go down. The smaller you were in the hierarchy, the more you had to lose. Survival of the fittest. 

Finger to the neck in one slice -  _Crrrrrrcccchhhh_  - and you were done for. 

He'd learned it the hard way. They'd all learned it the hard way. Vanessa used to say the hard way was the only way anybody could learn. Hiro didn't like thinking about everything that had happened down here. The time where he was part of her team, her legion, her army. All those fighters in those cages, all those bots - were her property. All the wins, all the losses - were her doing. 

It was part of a crooked scheme. Planned. Choreographed. Corrupt. Each fight rigged, winners and losers predestined. 'Oh, bet your cash on the big guy, that tiny kid won't win, not in a million years.' By now, people should've figured out that the tiny kid  _did_  win. And all that money splayed out into a network and landed right where it needed to land. At the top.

Money.

It was all about the money. The big bucks. Nobody cared about botfighting anymore. Nobody cared about skill or talent or the power of will. Botfighting was entertainment. Botfighting was business. The fighters were the worker bees, but the real big leagues were up in those flashy hightop buildings, everything down here controlled by people in suits with bleached smiles and crossed fingers pressed into their perfectly straight spines. 

Vanessa was the medium between everything up there and everything down here. 

And all this didn't look like much, but Hiro knew it was so much more. This was a faction of an empire. 

And Hiro was no longer part of it. He never would be. Never again. He was done. This was the end.

After tonight, Kurai would be behind him. 

 

 

 

Kenta brought him up to the room. 

Her room. 

Her thrown room. 

Red, like the inside of a body. And then there she was, and she was standing in the middle of it, red, like a heart, like an animate being that brought the purgatory to life. 

"Hiro Hamada." She turned it into a lullaby.

She thrusted right through his chest, and all she'd done was say his name. But she could do that. Hurt you without hurting you. Hiro remembered all the times she'd kissed his forehead, and it had felt like the nick of a knife. 

Hiro swallowed, eyes adjusting to the dim lights. Bloodstreams and smoke. Everything in here was a shade darker than what you could handle, the color of the walls, the carpet that flashed when you walked over it like fur, red fur, the hue of the light that touched the portraits hanging in symmetrical perfection, the shade of that one chair in the middle of all this empty space. Her center of gravity. Her thrown. It faced the tinted glass that replaced the fourth wall of the room. Her view of the pits. Her view of earth. 

"Vanessa," Hiro said, voice steadier than he'd expected it to be. He didn't back away. He had nothing to be afraid of. 

It felt weird saying her name. It  was a joke. It was the only thing that kept her tethered to all this, to human. 

When you heard 'Vanessa', you thought of a first-time stripper with a ten buck tattoo at the end of her spine, or some bratty little shit with pigtails and braces who bullied preschoolers with a vengeance. But not this. 

Vanessa didn't look like Vanessa. Vanessa didn't look like anything, really. Vanessa looked like something that wasn't supposed to have a name. 

All Hiro could see was her shadow.  She was standing behind the lounge chair, back facing the tinted window that was letting the world of the pits seep through in thick neon electric. You could hear the crowd, their screams, their fists, their heels pounding into the dirty concrete. 

Hiro heard the door slam shut behind him. He turned. Two bulky men slid in front of it, legs apart, hands behind their backs. They looked too clean to be part of all this down here. Prepped glitches. There was something slimy about them, like they could slither their way into any crack, any secret, rat you out, stab you in the back when you weren't looking. 

Kenta was leaning against a wall, everything about him dark and stretched into all the verticals. He was still smiling with those quinine teeth. A winner's smile. Kenta always smiled that smile that made you think he knew something you didn't know, like he was dangling your deepest darkest secret above your head - blackmailing you without you even knowing what it was. He sneered, and Hiro thought it might as well have been a bark. The way dogs did. The way wolves did and hyenas. Predators of the badlands.

"I knew you would come back, Hiro. I knew."

Hiro turned his head, her voice reaching out to him, curling into the space beneath his chin and pulling him towards her. 

She had her voice. Vanessa sounded just like his mother when she'd put him to sleep. Even now. Even here. Hiro felt his throat clump up. 

_ You're not letting her take you again. You're not. You're better than that.You're done. You're done. This is the end. This is it.  _

"I know," Hiro said. His voice was clumpy. He swallowed. The clumps stayed put. 

She came closer. Her red dress swayed in steady river streams, like in the Bible where the Nile turns to blood. You couldn't hear her, no rustling of fabric, no echo of footsteps, no creaks or cracks of bones. There was something in the way she held herself that made you think of religion, Gods and monsters, kingdoms in the sky, fire pits below the sea. 

"Did you, now? How's Blake?" She made it sound like a joke. Blake's shop was nothing compared to all of this - to all that was hers. 

Hiro didn't answer. She angled her head to the side, curious. 

"Well, then. Tell me. Why did you come back? I want to hear it coming from you. Why are you here," she was close enough to touch, "Hiro."

_ I'm here to sober up, to shake off a dream, to wake up. To come back to my own reality.  _

_ And in my reality, I need to wake someone else. He needs to come back, too.  _

"Chester," Hiro said. He couldn't hear his own voice. Vanessa shook her head. Hiro watched her dark hair twist with the movements, strands going back and forth, back and forth. The tips splayed across her shoulders and arms, fanned out into spiderwebs. 

She tutted, kept shaking her head faster until her red mouth distorted into a line, this cut in her face, bleeding. 

"Why would you, of all people, Hiro, waste your time on a corpse?"

"Because - "  _I care. I care enough about him to be here, to stand in front of you, to stand my ground.  _

"Because what?"

"Because he's my friend," Hiro said. A short huff came from the back. Hiro didn't waste a look on Kenta, but he could feel his wolf-eyes cutting into the side of his face. He knew he was still smiling. He knew. 

"Nobody is your friend down here. First thing I taught you, remember?" Vanessa never talked. She whispered, breathed, hushed even the harshest things. And ever since Vanessa, Hiro knew that soft spoken things could hurt even more than a scream or a stab wound when the adrenaline ran dry. 

_ 'Nobody is your friend down here, Hiro. Not even you. Not even yourself.' _

She'd said it the first night she'd offered to take him in. Give him a chance at a good life. And at the time, Hiro would've believed anything she'd told him. She'd been the only thing that had given him hope. She'd kept his head above water while the rest of the world had gone under. 

And he knew he should've listened to her. Nobody was your friend down here. Not even you. Not even her. Especially not her. 

But being with her had been an excuse to escape. Being with her had given him something closer to a purpose. But he looked at himself now, and he knew she'd been nothing. She'd been a blackout in his timeline, a patch of silence, non-existent, completely erased. 

"I didn't listen," Hiro said, and he wasn't afraid to look her in the eyes, the way he'd once been. He straightened his back a little more, toes straining to give his height a few more inches. 

He was looking at her, and she was looking at him, and it made him wonder if it had maybe been her eyes that had made him want to do everything for her. They were too soft, too quiet. It was like staring straight into a breeze, the kind that made your eyes tingle just the littlest bit, touched your cheeks, brushed your lips, spiraled through the shells of your ears. Her eyes made you feel so light, so safe. You could let your walls tumble. You could be a child all over again. 

You could let yourself be naive if just for a moment. 

But Hiro knew better now. He didn't need a savior. He didn't need someone to keep his head above water. He was just beneath the surface, and he was going to figure out how to swim all by himself. Because he knew he could. 

"I'm here for a proposition," Hiro said. He took a step forward, dared to take a whiff of her midnight atmosphere. 

"A proposition? Proposition is a very big word for a little boy like you, Hiro," she said. 

Kenta bubbled out a laugh. Ugly. Vanessa shot him a glance. He gurgled to a stop. Hiro smiled, but he couldn't feel it on his face. 

"The bot. The one you wanted. My bot for Chess. Cut him loose the right way. Stop fucking with him. Leave him alone." He swallowed. "And then it's all yours."

Vanessa turned her head, eyes snapping down to him with a bass. Her left eyelid twitched a fraction lower. It jumbled up her face, cut through the symmetry like an error. 

Hiro slid the backpack from his shoulders. It hit the floor with a thud. Vanessa didn't flinch, but her left eyelid did, just a little, just a tiny indicator. 

She jutted her chin out, shoulders tugged forward, ready for something, anything. A lion smelling antelope meat. 

Hiro ripped the zipper open and reached in. The cool of the metal made him breathe better. His creation.

He pulled the bot out. It felt heavy and sure in his hands, something he could put all his faith into. This was his. 

He'd spent two nights on it, snuck into the shop to give it life all on his own. And he'd never thought he'd be able to mend a piece of nothing and turn it into something this glorious. But he had. All by himself. This was his. 

He let his thumb slide across the sharp curve of the metal surface. Once. Twice. He could feel his beat in it. His own beat. 

She stepped back, dress swaying at her bare ankles. She wasn't wearing any shoes. She didn't like wearing shoes. She used to say she needed to feel the world breathe beneath her raw feet. Because that was power - feeling the motions of your kingdom roll right under you. 

Hiro swallowed, and he scrunched his eyes tight before gesturing for her to take it, his creation.

She eyed the bot, soft eyes slipping over the surface and the contours beneath. Hiro could feel her gaze on his fingertips, little brushes, careful touches. 

She looked at it until his arm got heavy.  A quick snap of her brittle wrist, and one of the men pealed themselves from the door. He yanked the bot out of Hiro's hands and slipped out of the room without a sound. Slimy people didn't make any sound.

Hiro's palm felt hollowed out. 

This was all that had ever mattered to her. She didn't care about you, about what a good boy you were, about what good things you'd done so she could keep her throne above the pits. All she cared about was the metal your hands could put together. And if your hands weren't good enough, she sliced them open, broke them a little, made them ugly, because, ' _If your hands aren't good enough, then you shouldn't use them at all_.'

Hiro looked down at his hands. The scars looked like stripes of plastic foil that had been taped to his skin. He turned them in the lowlights, watched the reflections glide over the bumps and nicks. Hiro scrunched his fingers into his palms until it hurt. 

"And?" Hiro forced her to look at him. He wouldn't blink. He wouldn't. 

"He doesn't deserve to be saved, Hiro."

"Everybody deserves to be saved, Vanessa."

She reached her hand out. And it looked so breakable, like a little pressure here and a little strain there could make it snap and fall off. 

She turned her hand so her palm faced the ceiling. The skin inside was blotchy red, blotchy white. Hiro traced the cracks of her shaking palm with his eyes, watched them quiver like loaded electric wires. 

You'd think that a hand like that could've never done so much damage. You'd think that a hand like that could've never built all this from the ground up. A whole entire world beneath the ground.

She had a child's hand. The littlest thing.

And Hiro held it. One quick shake. One quick pinch of pressure. 

_ Deal. _

Then he let go of her hand for good.

He could feel her holding on, her skin pulling at his skin, sucking it in, luring it back into her. 

Hiro tugged his hand back all the way. 

_ I am done with you.  _

The crowd in the pits burst out into more cheers. It sounded loose, sloshy-beneath-the-skin, nasty.  Vanessa blinked, and you could see her eyes filling up with something darker, lips curling up, cheeks stained - face bursting like a pried open rib cage. The pits were like her fucked up fountain of youth. 

"If you'd stayed, you would've been so good with me," she said. And it was the nicest thing, her voice. His mother's lullaby voice. 

"I would've showed you the rest of the stars." She made it sound like magic. 

Hiro shook his head. He wished he could shake the memories out. Shake them out, off, away. 

She knew all of his secrets, all the ugly ones, the ones that roamed the darker lands of his brain and did nothing but hurt. She knew them. She knew how he'd wanted to live in the sky and trace every constellation with his fingertips, how he'd wanted to go find his mother somewhere between the Milky-Way and the Great Beyond, how he'd wanted to breathe in all the dust and gas and be the greatest cosmonaut the galaxy had ever touched. 

She'd been the savior he'd run to after CPS had stuffed him into the closest foster home. He'd crawled out of the kitchen window, not caring if he'd become a runner because it was the end of the world, and he'd run and run and run all the way down here, and she'd held his hands, and he'd rambled down the names of all the constellations he'd learned by heart. The way he'd done with his mom every night before he went to sleep. The way he'd done lying next to her on the bathroom floor, long after she was cold and gone. 

"If I'd stayed, I would've ended up in a body bag," Hiro said, forcing himself to keep looking at her. He wouldn't blink. He wouldn't.  "Just like him," he said. "Just like Chess." 

She reached out and touched his cheek without actually touching it. He didn't flinch. He didn't blink. Back straight. Hair out of his eyes. Hands out in the open. 

_She can't hurt me anymore. _

"I get bored," she said with a little puff of her breath, childish, like she was just playing a twisted game and she had a right to moan about it. "Everybody does. Everybody gets bored, Hiro."

She turned around in one motion, hands flowing against the pattern of her dress, a dancer swaying across a polished floor, toes twirling to the slowest waltz. She always looked like she was part of something you couldn't see.

"Not the way you do," Hiro said. He felt his fists coil. And every time he closed his eyes, he could see him - Chess - crying, shouting, ripping at his hair like he could rip her out of his system the same way. 

Vanessa had her back facing him, dainty but held high by her pride. She was standing in front of the window, looking down at the neon chaos that was her home. Hiro's home from a lifetime ago. 

"You've never been good with that," she said, head angled to the side so he could see her profile, all girlish-small and pointy. 

"With what?"

"Letting go when you're done."

Hiro's feet twitched forward, but he didn't let himself get far. One more step, and someone would break. He could feel it in the air. A flexed bowstring ready to snap. 

"You see," she raised a hand to the glass, "that's the difference between a silly boy like you - and me." 

She traced spirals into the tinted surface, the oils on her fingertips leaving imprints. 

"I let go when I feel like it. Because I am not weak. I let go, and it's gone for good." Her hand fell back against her side. "I know you, Hiro. You keep trying. You keep trying to run. You let go, and you keep clinging to the edge," she said. "And it happens again and again and again."

It felt like a stab, like someone was plunging a knife into his stomach and ripping it back and forth. 

Because she was right. Because she had him figured out. Because she knew. 

_ Cycles. Round and round and round. With a heart like ours, Hiro. With a heart like ours. Because we're not strong enough. We're not strong. We're not strong.  _

Vanessa stepped closer against the window. It looked like she was standing at the edge, a shadow in a colossal portrait of neon and black fractures. The leader of the pits. He remembered standing at that window as much as he'd been allowed to, pretending he knew what it felt like to be on top of the world beneath. 

A child thinking he'd found a home. A better home. 

Vanessa lifted her hand, a gentle sway of her creature arm, and the men behind Hiro opened the door. 

Hiro knew she wouldn't watch him leave. He was nothing to her. He a weak little pillar in her mighty empire. 

Hiro turned his back, and he knew he was turning his back for good.

"I'm not weak," Hiro said once he reached the door. "You need to be so strong to hold on. You have no idea."

The door shut before he finished his last sentence. And he was standing there, alone, at the top of the metal staircase that led back down into the underworld. He didn't feel alone. He'd never been alone. 

He looked up, eyes filtering out the building, the city lights, the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, dust and gas and everything in-between.  

And there she was, and she was looking down, and he felt her hands on his cheeks, and she was smiling, and she was so, so beautiful. 

And she knew. She knew. 

"I am not weak," Hiro said, and she knew. 

 

 ✦

" _Hiro_?"

"I'm here, come outside."

" _Where 'here'_?"

"Where do you think?"

Hiro could make out the 'Sorry, We're Closed' sign in the blue light of the night. It was the only thing he could see, a beacon, a calling. 

_ Home. _

The lights of the cafe spilled out in steady streams. The storefront windows were skies right before a sunrise, rays crawling up, up and away. 

Hiro pressed his weight forward, board zooming faster than sound. His feet were itching, but he didn't care. Let them itch. 

"I'm here," Hiro said, half into the mike of his phone, half out in the open. Maybe he could hear him through the speaker. Maybe he could hear him outside. In the dark. In the cold.

A figure tumbled towards the glass door, broad shoulders, slender legs - big hands. His hands. The ones that held Hiro's like a Figure-Eight-Follow-Through, the kind of knot climbers used so they wouldn't fall, wouldn't slip down into the bottom. They got caught every time. 

"Hiro?" he said, voice squeezing itself through the cracks in the door. 

_ Here.  _

Hiro jammed his thumb against the red button and dug his phone into his sweater. 

_I'm right here._  

Tadashi opened the door, all the light spilling out between his arms and legs, mingling with him, everything lukewarm. No temperature could ever come close to this. 

He stepped out into the cold, barefoot, phone dangling from his fingers. Hiro forced his board to a stop. Tadashi was standing there, at the top of the staircase, and all the yellow light made him look like something that had come from the sky, some place bursting with shooting stars and sun beams, meteorites, spiraled orbits, everything ruled by the man in the moon. 

Tadashi smiled with his mouth closed.

The man in the moon. 

"What are you doing here?" Tadashi said.

"I'm here for you," Hiro said.

"At the three in the morning?" His smile softened, tired but there. All there.

"It's not three." Hiro gestured towards his watch. 

"Fine. But almost."

"Okay, yeah. In four minutes. But - yeah. Almost."

Hiro's words were cut off by winter-puff breaths. His chest was moving so fast. He didn't even know why. He felt like he'd run across every single atlas line a million times in a row. Just to get here. Just to get to him. Hiro would do it in real life. He'd swim through oceans, run down empty highways, climb over skyscrapers and mountain ranges forever - just to get to him. He was worth every step of the way.

"Why are you here at almost three?" Hiro asked, ignoring the fact that - yeah - that was a really stupid question. But he'd ask him every single stupid question on the planet just to hear his voice a little more. 

His normal voice, the one he hadn't heard for so long, the one that reminded him of that 'Good Morning!' the first time he'd ever spoken to him. 

"I'm here for you," Tadashi said, and he smiled wider, all of his teeth showing. Hiro's chest burst open like his heart was a rocket launcher. Three. Two. One. Blast off. 

Hiro kicked his board, the panel carrying him up, and Tadashi stumbled out onto the concrete, and he was coming down, towards him, towards that special spot in middle of the staircase. Their spot. Their middle. Their in-between. 

And there was this thing surrounding them, this bite between their matter. Gravity. And in mechanics, gravity was by far the weakest known force in nature. But gravity wasn't defined by its mechanics. Gravity reached further. Gravity controlled the trajectories of bodies in the solar system, defined the very structure and evolution of stars and galaxies, the history of the cosmos. Gravity was the fundament of the universe.

Gravity made them meet halfway. 

 

 

 

There was coffee waiting for him in front of his most favorite chair in the whole wide world. The big leather armchair with all its cracks and its scars, right next to the storefront window, Hiro's place to watch the world wake up. 

Hiro didn't want to let Tadashi's arm go. He didn't want him in a separate chair, he wanted him right by his side, pressed against him, his skin, his warmth, his everything. Hiro couldn't stand the thought of touching and untouching him all over again. They squeezed themselves into the armchair, Hiro halfway curled into his lap, halfway dangling over the armrests. He liked this, just being tangled up in each other like jumbled shoelaces. Nobody would ever have the nerve to unscramble them. 

The lights were off. Hiro didn't know why Tadashi had turned the lights off. But it was better that way. He felt more comfortable looking at him up close without seeing too much. He'd die otherwise - of hyperventilation and heart palpitations and embarrassment because he'd find all the little places on his face that he'd love to kiss. Like his eyelids. Hiro really wanted to kiss his eyelids, feel them flutter against his mouth like hummingbirds and butterflies and the beats inside of wrists. And his chin. He had the nicest chin. Shit, Hiro loved his chin. And the bridge of his nose with the little curve in it. Hiro wanted to kiss it all. The way Tadashi had at Honey's party.

Those kisses felt like a lifetime ago. His mouth and his eyes and his urgent touches. 

And his words. Words that had hurt so much - and healed so much, too. 

They didn't say anything. They just kept their foreheads pressed against each other, listening to their lungs share the same air. Hands knotted. 

Hiro didn't know what to say. What was left to say? 

_Everything. _   


He was crying before he knew what the hell was going on. 

"God, what the fu-" Hiro pushed himself away, hands trying to find his eyeballs and make them stop bawling. He felt like a five year old. He was always, always crying. Dudes didn't cry. Men did not cry. 

"This is - I - " Hiro tried to talk, but his throat was doing that stupid thing where it was constantly bobbing around, making him sound like he was drowning in hiccups. 

"Sorry, Jesus - _fuck_. " Hiro pressed his palms into his eyes, held them there until the skin was drenched, wet-through.

"Hey." 

Hiro could feel those good hands around his wrists, pressure just the right amount to tug his fingers away from his face. 

"Hey," Tadashi said, and Hiro could feel his hands on his head, holding him in place. He rubbed his thumbs across the pockets under Hiro's eyes. Over and over again. Steady motions. 

"It's okay. It's okay," Tadashi breathed. His voice was a wisp, the softest thing Hiro had ever heard. 

Hiro pulled the snot up his nose. Jesus fucking Christ. He was five. Maybe even younger. Maybe four and a half. Or maybe just four. Barely. Barely four years old. 

"I suck," Hiro said.

"Me, too," Tadashi said, and Hiro swore his eyes were wet, too.

"Oh my G - fuck, if you start crying, I won't stop. Ever. We're so pathetic. Stop it. No crying. Don't you dare."

Hiro pressed his hands against Tadashi's face, wiggled him around a bit. 

"We're men," Hiro said, forcing his voice down into a gravelly-low wood feller pitch. " _T_ _ough grown men_. Tough grown men don't cry."

But that just made him sob harder, and Tadashi's eyeballs were leaking, too, and they had no reason to cry. And then Tadashi started to laugh, and it was God-awful, because Hiro started to laugh. And fuck, fuck, fuck, he was falling for this asshole. 

"Tough grown men," Tadashi said. He coughed. He laughed. He scrunched his nose. Hiro wanted to kiss his nose. 

"Tough grown men," Hiro said, and he said it again because it sounded so wonderful. 

Tadashi wiped Hiro's fringe out of his eyes. Hiro wiped away the little droplets on Tadashi's lashes. Every time he closed them, they fluttered like they were about to take flight. Hiro really, really wanted to kiss those, too. First his eyelids, then his eyelashes, then his everything else. Everything he could reach. 

Hiro's eyes had adjusted to the dark. It couldn't really be called dark. Nothing in this part of San Fransokyo could be considered dark. Even at night. Places like these were an endless loops of lazy afternoons, shadows nothing but soft discolorations in an afterglow. 

Just like his face. Right now. Right here. He was so, so beautiful. 

And Hiro wondered how stuff like this could just - _happen_.  How could you just meet someone like this and let them turn your life upside-down and your brain inside-out?

What if this was the long haul? 

It was terrifying, thinking you could find something like this at the end of the world, a time where your universe had been nothing but rubble and dust and infinite nothings. How could you just find something like this when you didn't even know if you were ready to keep it? 

Hiro was 19 - barely four, actually -and how was he supposed to deal with this, with him, with that smile that looked like the rest of his life. 

Hiro let his fingers trail along the edge of Tadashi's bruise. Blues and lilacs fading fast. 

_ Someone is going to love this person forever and ever and ever. Someone is going to wake up to this every day. Someone is going to hold his hand until it's old and shriveled, heart lines filled with never-ending stories. Someone is going to love him until the very end, until he's down in the ground, until he's up in the stars.  _

_ And that someone might not be me.  _

But for now, Hiro pretended that that someone just had to be him. Him. Hiro. For now, he was sure. For now, he could get away with a promise. 

Because for now, they were the only two people left in the universe. Nothing else had ever existed. They were absolute. 

For now. Just for now. This was their perfect little safe haven, tucked away. 

"Why do you like me?" Hiro asked. 

He didn't know when else to ask. Now, felt right. He could ask him anything he wanted to. He could tell him anything he wanted to. Nobody else was listening. It was just them. Just this. Hiro wanted to crawl into Tadashi's head and never ever leave. 

Tadashi shifted beneath him. Hiro's leg had fallen asleep, but he chewed at the inside of his cheek to make himself forget about the tingles. 

Tadashi's hand was on the back of his neck, fingers splaying out over the dip of his skull, tangled into his hair, holding on. He pulled him towards him. Their foreheads bumped. Hiro loved their foreheads when they bumped. All he could see was a blur. Tadashi's face was art. The surrealistic kind. The kind you had to look at from a distance for everything to come together and make sense. But up close - he was everything, everything out in the open, a jumble of colors and lines, raw, untouched, that first draft that was nothing but emotion running wild on a canvas. 

"I don't know," Tadashi said. 

"How can you not know?" 

"It's like asking why I like yellow?"

"Why do you like yellow?"

"I - " Tadashi inhaled. Once. Twice. Hiro wondered what he smelled like to him. "I don't know…Because it's bright? And it makes me happy?"

"Do I make you happy?"

"Do you make - No. No. You make me -" Hiro felt Tadashi shake his head. " Everyhing. You make me happy and sad and angry and frustrated and worried to death and sometimes - sometimes, I think I might actually hate you. And then sometimes, I like you. I like you so, so much that I want you with me all the time, just constantly by my side - until I get sick of you. But I wouldn't. I would never. Because you're everything, Hiro. You're everything. And sometimes, I feel like if I ever let you go, you'd just disappear. I've never been afraid of something so -  _ridiculous_.  Because it's ridiculous. Liking you this -  _this much_ \- is ridiculous."

Tadashi's breath hit Hiro's voice in quick, warm gusts. And Hiro had never thought he could fall a little more. Never had he thought he could just slip in even deeper. All the way. He was losing himself all the way. 

"It's not ridiculous," Hiro said. 

_ Because I know what it feels like. I know.  _

But Tadashi kept shaking his head, his hair rubbing against his, creating static. 

"It's ridiculous," Tadashi said. "I'm ridiculous."

"You're not ridiculous."

"I am."

"Fine. Then - then, me, too!" Hiro said, and he pulled Tadashi a little closer, just enough for their chests to almost meet. Hiro's heart wanted to grab a hold of him. He could feel it, little red fists drumming against his rib cage to let it out. 

_ Let me out. Let me touch him. Let me touch him! _

"Then I'm - I'm ridiculous, too, because - I think I like you so much I don't think I'd be able to give you everything I want to give you. Like, it's - " Hiro swallowed. He inched away a little. He wanted to see his eyes. Even in the dark. Even when he couldn't really see them. But he knew what they looked like. 

Like the most bittersweet month of the year. 

"It's too much. I'd never be able to do it like this. Because I just don't have enough time. Not enough fucking time. And I'm ridiculous - because I know I should've stopped at the point where I knew I was at full capacity - like - the moment where I knew I was never going to make it." Hiro tried to catch his breath. His words made less sense out in the open. They sounded like a jumble. Not right. He wished he could go again. He wished he could rephrase it all, so he could make him understand. Whatever he was saying didn't feel good enough.

Tadashi was just staring at him, breathing. Hiro could hear the shallow thrusts of that organ in his chest. He tightened his grip around Hiro's head and said, "I'm glad you didn't stop."

And now, Hiro was the one to shake his head like crazy. More voltage. More static.

"No, you don't - I - Like, I'm all backwards. You know? I'm afraid all the time because I feel like it  _could_ stop. And I don't want it to stop. But it  could stop. Because that's, like - it's out of my hands, right? I'm backwards. I'm all backwards. And I always feel like I don't fit into - I just don't fit into anything you're part of."

Hiro should never be allowed to talk. Fuck his mouth. Fuck his brain. 

"You keep doing that," Tadashi said flush against his face. Warm breath. Air in motion. "You keep doing that. You keep pushing yourself out of the picture. I like you. I like you so much that I can't look at you without thinking someone turned the world upside down. That's what you do, Hiro. You change everything. You have all these things up here," Tadashi rubbed his fingers against the back of his Hiro's head, and it felt like he was reaching in, touching all that was inside, all the memories, all the hurt and the bad, all the dreams of time and space and stars, "and those things look like they terrify you. And I think it would terrify me, too - to have the whole entire universe inside of my head." Tadashi's thumb brushed his cheek, and he did it again and again, tugged at the flesh until it was tingling. "Nothing looks the same after you leave, Hiro. Nothing looks right. And I wish I could live inside of there and just look at the world from that angle that nobody else can. And you don't fit in. You don't. And you're not supposed to. God, you - I don't want you to. You're too wonderful for this. You're too wonderful for everything in here and everything out there. And I like you like this. This is enough. This is good. You are good like this. So, so  _good_. "

Good. Hiro and good.  

_ 'Because you deserve better, Hiro. You deserve better.' _

Hiro and good. Hiro and better. 

Tadashi's hand pressed his head closer, closer, closer, until their foreheads were bumping and their noses, too, and their lips found each other in the afterglow. They were sitting inside of a single heartbeat. Just one. A soft drum. A lukewarm ripple. Red, like the air right before the sun came up. 

Hiro never wanted to find his way out. 

And kissing him didn't feel the way he'd expected it to feel like. No lightning bolts or gargantuan blast offs in a silent universe. 

It was simple, serene, the easiest thing. 

Kissing him was like letting the waves take you for a swim, and you did nothing but breathe and drift, breathe and drift, until you started sliding lower, leaving the world behind with one short inhale. And then you reached the bottom, and it was warm, and it was safe, and all that was left was the sun touching your face through the surface up above. 

Tadashi had him tight in his arms and his hands, and he held him like he wasn't made for anything other than this. Because that was who Tadashi was. 

Tadashi was the person who held you through every turbulence. He smiled, and your brain just went,  ' _Godspeed_ '. He was that place you curled yourself into when you needed to shut the world out.He was the one and only person you wanted in the driver's seat when you were on a highway shooting towards the sunrise. Tadashi was that one secret you kept tucked inside of your rib cage, between your lungs, right next to every single breath. 

Tadashi was medicine. 

Tadashi made you feel better. He didn't make you better, didn't turn you into a better person. He just made you  _feel_ better. It was this sense of all the good parts you had stowed away in the back of your mind, the parts he jumpstarted back to life.

And maybe for a few beats, you forgot the rest of yourself, and the only things that had ever existed were all the parts that were touching him, all the parts that were dipped into his lukewarm atmosphere. 

And you wanted to make him feel the same way. 

Hiro knew he couldn't keep every single bad thing from happening to him. He knew he couldn't protect him the way he wanted to. He couldn't be his savior. He couldn't heal him and mend him through. He couldn't be the only thing standing between him and everything bad in the world. Because Hiro was just Hiro.

But Hiro could love him more than all the bad things had ever hurt. And he hoped that was enough. 

Hiro wanted to tell him that. Hiro wanted to tell him that and so, so much more. Tadashi needed to know. 

But Hiro wasn't good with words when it came to the world outside of his head. 

So he just kept kissing him and holding him and kissing him some more, until he couldn't breathe and everything beneath his skin was damp and blazing.  

_ Let him know. Let him know he's the best thing you've ever held onto.  _

 

 

 

Tadashi fell asleep with his head in the crook of Hiro's neck. Tadashi fit into every one of Hiro's angles. He just fit without any gaps in-between. 

Hiro kept counting his breaths to ten. Over and over again. Hiro didn't feel like sleeping, not when Tadashi was right where he needed to be, against Hiro's chest, between his arms, as close as possible, no empty spaces left to fill. Right now, Tadashi was all his. Nobody was allowed to take him away. He belonged. 

_ Right here, with me.  _

Hiro let his finger brush up and down the knobs of his spine, felt his rib cage go back and forth, back and forth.

_ One breath. Two breaths. Three. Four. Five breaths. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine breaths. Ten.  _

_ Now, count again.  _

And Hiro knew it could stop now. After this. Now, was good. Now, was the perfect time. What they had now couldn't get any better. What they had now was everything. This was the last curtain call. If he didn't leave now, he would never be able to leave again.

Touching and untouching for the very last time. 

This was it. This could be his get-away ticket. Forever. 

He could turn away with the warmest ray of sunshine on his back. And wasn't that the best way to turn? Wasn't that the best way to run away? 

Let the sun release you bit by bit until you didn't even realize that it was missing.

Now, was better than later. Later would be too late. Later would kill him.

Touching and untouching. 

Hiro gripped Tadashi tighter. He felt him stir against his skin, mouth pressing sleepy little things into his neck, gibberish and breath.

_ One breath. Two. Three breaths. Four. Five. Six breaths. Seveneightnineten.  _

And then again and again and again. 

Hiro was never  going to stop counting.    


This - this, right here - was the start of the rest of his life.  This was the start of fighting back and holding on.

 

 

 

Hiro looked out of the storefront window. He watched the sun climb up the horizon, beams pushing away the dark, leftovers of another night.

Hiro watched the world wake up. 

And it was the first time he felt like he was waking up, too. 

To his very own reality. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't know how I feel about this chapter. Every time I read through it, I was torn between loving it and hating it. I don't know. I guess, we all go through that sometimes.  
> Sooo...WHUUOOOOHHH...it's almost done. I AM SO ANGSTY. Angst is my boogie-juice! I should really start getting my shit together. Nobody should have this much fun at breaking characters apart... And really, it's just a means to push them to their limit and find out what they've got. Which - I know - is not the way stories should work, but I feel like readers deserve to find out the truth about the characters and understand them from the inside-out. And Hiro is the type of person who has to constantly fight against himself. The things he does aren't anywhere near rational. They're impulsive and conflicting, and it can get chaotic. He's a cute little rollercoaster ride. And I love him to pieces ohmygod. Also, the background stories of Tadashi and Hiro are somewhat metaphorical. They were both forced into a situation where they were too afraid to help. And what's happening with them now is just the result of how they are coping with their pasts. But I just wanted them to have gone through the same kind of trauma and watch their personalities take the lead. ("You can't fix your own problems with fixing others."; "You can't fix yourself when you keep expecting others to do it for you.")  
> I just felt like I needed to explain it a little, because writing characters with such dark pasts is so freaking difficult. And I really don't want to take it lightly. All the information that I've gathered about the effects of childhood trauma are from the internet (and this century old psychology lexicon I found in my grandma's cellar - a cellar that she shares with other people, so it might not be hers, and I might be a delinquent because I've been using it as a mini-table for my laptop...) I just really, really hope I haven't offended anybody with my writing. I know these are problematic topics.  
> Anywhoo-ha, hope you're having a spectabulous day! Here's a buttload of my cat-lady-love and affection :) <3  
> 


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